Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have a couple of notes and you have ably covered some of the points I want to raise, Chairman, in particular regarding facts that were given to us this morning. One point is that in 2022 we planted only 2,000 ha, which is the lowest plantation since 1946. How can we explain to future generations what we were at in the early 2020s? The programme for Government clearly states that we will plant 8,000 ha. We get caught up here a lot of the time talking about licences and the number of licences, but it is hectares of saplings planted on the ground that will determine the outcome and that is what we will all be judged on at the end of the day. We are talking about a mere 2,000 ha. At the end of April, the nurseries will plant seeds to provide the saplings for 2025. Can the Department tell them how many seeds they need to plant and how many trees will be planted? How can they predict? When they read the programme for Government, it states 8,000 ha, but the fact is that we only planted 2,000 ha last year. It is very damning. I am taken aback by the fact that it is almost considered a success story in the presentation that there will be no felling licences pre-2021 in the system by the end of the second quarter of 2022.

That is saying openly that there will be licences that are 18 months in. I do not see that as a win in any way.

As the Chairman mentioned, I would also like the Minister of State to comment again on the ratio of licences that are being issued between Coillte and the private sector. The silver bullet came when I was on the previous agriculture committee when the Minister of State's predecessor introduced the Mackinnon report. There are 21 recommendations in the Mackinnon report. A similar Mackinnon report was done in Scotland. They implemented all the recommendations of Mackinnon. As we were told this morning, Scotland's forestry sector is flying at the moment and if it were not, the seeds that were sown here by our nurseries would have had to have been dumped. They were exported to Scotland, however, as there is such a demand because they implemented the Mackinnon report in a three-year period.

We commissioned Mackinnon then to do a report here based on that and now we are doing umpteen more reports and analysis. Project Woodland groups are meeting. We heard of one group that has already met 25 times. We were told that three of the recommendations of Mackinnon have been implemented. Where are the other 18? When will they be implemented? When, if ever, will we reach the target of 8,000 ha per annum, which is actually only 50% of what we were on 20 years ago?