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

I welcome our guests. They have made their case incredibly well and have answered a number of the obvious questions. We have been talking about a crisis in forestry for a number of years, certainly in my time in national politics. We have called it an emergency more recently. I do not know what word we are supposed to use when we have gone beyond an emergency. The situation we are in today is incredibly concerning. If the dashboard we have received is correct, then far from the 1,000 ha of planting the Minister claimed on 8 February had taken place in January, the correct figure is closer to 66 ha. That would suggest the Minister is entirely wrong in his belief that 7,000 ha of licensed land is going to come on stream incredibly quickly because of the new forestry programme. The rates are fairly similar to what they were last year. We are now in a situation whereby no new afforestation applications can be submitted. If we were to take into consideration the form of the Department in recent times, I would be afraid it will make an absolute hames of this application when it submits it to the European Commission. We could be waiting far longer than the two months that have been suggested. We could go through the entirety of 2023 with virtually no planting taking place. That would have serious repercussions because, as was mentioned by our previous guests, our climate action plans are working under the assumption we have been planting 8,000 ha for the past three years, never mind what we do this year. Within the next couple of years, the people who are responsible for the failures in forestry will be pointing fingers at everybody else, particularly members of our guests' organisations and other farm organisations. We are in a position where farming organisations are coming before us and telling us they want to plant trees and to be part of the solution to the afforestation crisis, emergency, or whatever new word we can come up with to describe the situation. The Department, the Minister and the Government are failing miserably. The only tangible thing that has been done in respect of afforestation in recent months is the Gresham House deal that Coillte did with the absolute knowledge of Ministers and which has led to further disengagement of communities of farmers and the entire sector from afforestation.

Our guests have recounted the frustrations and negative experiences of their members in respect of afforestation. If we were starting with a blank page, what things would need to happen immediately in order for us to return to the situation that pertained in the early 2000s, whereby farmers were meeting our afforestation targets? They were even exceeding our current afforestation targets.