Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and Minister of State. Before I hand over to the members, I wish to make three short points and I will comment later as I have a good bit to say about this new forestry strategy. We all earnestly hope the new strategy will be successful and increase afforestation. We have a very significant figure as part of the programme for Government. In the lifetime of this Government, we will not meet the annual figure that we have set when we agreed the national Government programme.

I wish to first refer to the third point made by the Minister of State on the amount of land that will now be excluded from afforestation. She said that "this is necessary to meet our environmental obligations and to avoid the mistakes of the past. We can no longer plant on special protection areas, SPAs", which are special protection areas of birds, "on the top eight freshwater pearl mussel areas or within 1.5 km of curlew breeding sites." A lot of environmental experts would say that the policy is not the correct one because different stages of afforestation in those areas actually enhance the habitats but I will leave that point aside for the moment. The reality is that the change in land eligibility will take away about 80% of the capital value of that land, and that has been historically with hen harriers, etc. Where there is a blanket ban on afforestation, the land is now only worth 20% of what it was worth previously. What plans will be put in place to compensate landowners for a massive depreciation in the capital value of their land?

The next figure that worries hugely is that 76% of applications which are currently in the system have question marks over their eligibility for afforestation. Over three quarters of the applications are in the system. Unfortunately, given our experience over the last number of years of delays in the system with licensing, for the Minister of State to say that there are question marks about eligibility will send a shiver up the spines of the applicants and 76% is a huge figure.

The Minister of State said that "farmers are key to the delivery of the programme."

In previous programmes, where non-farmers were entitled to premiums as was the case in times gone by, the difference was that farmers were always entitled to a longer term than investors. However, farmers under those programmes were entitled to a significantly higher premium than the investor. This time around, the premium payment is the same for farmers and non-farmers. That does not send a signal that farmers are key to the delivery of the programme.

Yesterday morning I heard the advertisement for the new afforestation programme. The last line of it was that afforestation will be very good for improving water quality, which we would all like to see given the issues we have with the nitrates derogation. However, in reality that is not true and afforestation has the opposite impact. For example, Leitrim is in the red area on the EPA map. Leitrim has the highest level of afforestation in the country and probably the lowest stocking rate, and it is in the EPA red zone. I do not think that afforestation will solve our water quality issues. There was something in that advertisement that I most definitely did not agree with. There seems to be only one fall guy for poor water quality at the moment and nobody else is taking the blame for it. That afforestation advertisement does not tally with what is happening in Leitrim.

Those are the initial four points I want to make on where we are. I earnestly hope this programme attracts land into afforestation as is absolutely essential for our climate change targets and also to keep a vibrant rural industry that we have in place. Members of the committee have visited some of these factories in very rural parts of the country. No replacement industry could provide the amount of employment they generate and the wealth they create. It is absolutely essential to have a source of timber for those plants. We have had a number of years of very little afforestation. If we are to save our timber industry, it is essential that we get our figures for afforestation up and running. Would the Minister of State like to answer those questions or will I open it up to the committee?