Mr. Brian Smyth:

It is the cumulative impact of multiplying small plots and then a drive by corporates to pack them and build scale in them. They are trading the land, even within the county, between companies. Certainly, they are issues. All the groups would suggest that Coillte's remit be looked at. It engages with communities to an extent, but it could be far more based on community input.

On the issue of felling, if there was a community remit, then they would be much more aware of what is happening. I was at a house on Sunday where people lost power for four days. Felling went ahead. One of the recent storms brought trees down on the line and cut the power to the house for four days. That was purely because ESB was watching the network. It did not have a proper licence and did not manage the felling to trim back along the lines before it started opening it up. It opened it up and two storms came in and took massive amounts of trees and power out. The inconvenience there is that the trees grow up and people lose their Internet and TV connections. There are all sorts of issues. Those are two of them.

There should be a statutory requirement to develop a land-use policy with proper consultation and input from the local authority which states that the area will not be planted or not planted any more. There are townlands now where the percentage of areas planted is in the 90s. When we were attending the forestry appeals in person, we were seeing on the screen the percentage of the areas planted. It is frightening in some areas, with 90% of the townland planted. When you get to that, who is ever going to go back to live there? Then the next townland goes, and so on. It is cumulative, as Ms McVeigh has said. That is the killer. In County Leitrim, we have the highest percentage planted. It is similar in west Cavan, parts of east Clare and north Kerry. It gets to a point where the canary in the coalmine indicates that there is a big problem here. Until the canary dies, people will say that it is grand and we can work away. What we are saying here today is that we want the members to listen. We want change. The state aid decision is driving plantation. If that same state aid was being used to deliver biodiversity and tackle climate change by funding farmers to plant for 25 for 30 years for purely carbon emissions, they would not have to fell the trees necessarily. They would not have to be looking for felling licences. Part of their land could be planted for those reasons alone. That would help support the price of land as much as it would for afforestation. Real thought in those things is needed. It will encourage people who have more valuable land in terms of finance to perhaps also consider planting that poor land.