Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am coming to that in a minute but let me state the difficulty I have about the commercial activity. We have spoken before and the witnesses will be aware I am passionate about Ireland reaching its afforestation targets. As I have said a million times, it needs to be good for communities, good for the economy and good for the environment. In every single debate we have had, I have pointed out where we did things wrong and from which we should learn lessons is the experience of communities in Leitrim. That was a complete disaster. This appears to me to be Leitrim on steroids. What happened in Leitrim was that private, non-domestic investors came in, bought up land and built resentment among local farmers who were priced out. They created forests and because they had no stake, not being the State-owned company or local, they created huge hostility to a point where there are parts of the country now where afforestation is a dirty word. My fear is that what I am hearing today is that will be exacerbated and will become a much wider problem than we have seen there.