Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. I came in with a set of questions based on having read one of the submissions and I have completely different questions now. I have found the meeting interesting. This is all connected. We seem to be in trouble with our land use and we urgently need to do something. I appreciate the optimism, particularly from Dr. Moran, about how we can do this and what we can do. I would like to share it but I am a little more depressed about the whole scenario. We got the presentation from Dr. Byrne about the forestry situation. I looked at a map that illustrates this. Approximately 71% of our forest coverage is a monoculture of Sitka spruce. There are many problems with getting rid of it, because we would be releasing much carbon. Going round Ireland, one can see that we have destroyed mountainsides where the bog was pristine and beautiful by draining it and planting these forests. Everybody present will agree that we made a bags of our land use over the years. How we reverse it is what puzzles me. If it is doing that much damage, how do we undo that damage and move to a situation with afforestation where we have broadleaf and native trees covering most of our land?

I realised at a young age that this is a horrible environment. If one likes walking the hills and goes through these hills, one can see how dark and void of wildlife they are. There is acid in the water and frogs do not live in it anymore. Birds and insects do not hang about. Flowers do not grow. It is a horrible environment for biodiversity. There is a double problem of biodiversity, dealing with carbon emissions, and doing something about our land use. I would like to share the optimism but I am not sure how we get there. I know from hillwalking this summer that some farmers are draining bogs and getting them ready to plant more Sitka spruce. It is private land rather than public land. How do we deal with that? Do we need to pass laws? How can we stop that from happening? There is more incentive for them to plant Sitka spruce than to do anything else.

I get that a radical transformation is required. I know many young people who are enthusiastic about growing mushrooms and hemp, for example, as an alternative. Hemp can be a building and insulation material. I am not sure that we have the answers here. It has been said that we have top-class bodies such as Teagasc, but do they have the teeth and willingness to say that we have to stop this and rapidly change how we use our land? If it is not done rapidly, then this conversation is quite academic, as far as I understand the science that has been presented. It is a broad question about how we force this agenda for good reasons.

We must incentivise farmers, but the industrial farming lobby is such a strong one in this country that it will not hear any talk of a reduction in the herd number or of the use of nitrates. This is precisely what we need to do, along with rewetting places. I find it worrying that, as we speak, bogs are being drained and being prepared for more Sitka spruce planting, when we have this disastrous management of land.