Pippa Hackett (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I disagree with Deputy Flaherty; I do not believe it is a flawed policy. Even when we engaged extensively in advance of this, the public told us they wanted to see a mix of species in our forest estate. They want to see more trees. It is not ideological. There is not a resistance to conifers. We absolutely need conifer trees, which is something I have articulated at every opportunity. We need all types of trees here and not one tree or the other. We need more of all types of trees for all sorts of reasons. We need a multifunctional forest estate. Unfortunately, in the past it has been excessively focused on one or two types of trees. That has been to our detriment and we are still carrying some of those legacy issues and will continue to carry them. We now have an opportunity to try to fix the mistakes of the past and move forward with this exciting new programme in a direction that deals with some of the issues while opening up more opportunities. I am confident that we will get it right and I look forward to seeing that.

Senator Lombard spoke about the replanting. There are a few Acts in play here. The Forestry Act obliges replanting. That is set in our own legislation. The EU has a deforestation regulation which does not support deforestation.