Mr. Simon White:

First, many thanks are due to the Cathaoirleach and all the committee members for the invitation to appear before them again today. I will first introduce our representatives and then give a brief outline of our response to this review report and concerns regarding the official response to date. With me today is our secretary, Ms Maura Duggan, and vice chairman, who members may remember, Mr. John O'Connell.

As members will know, win LTWO have been at the forefront of representing ash plantation owners. This is our fourth time presenting to this and previous committees since 2019. From the beginning, we have been consistent and sent out no mixed messages when lobbying or to those we represent. With fair dues to the committee members from across all political divides, they have accepted that the affected landowners have been dealt an enormous injustice. It is definitely arguable that the inadequate initial response by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, through its forest service, was through a mistaken belief that the measures it chose might work. Since 2017, however, there has been no justification to hide behind this for the way in which it treated affected landowners. Only a few days ago, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, was noted saying on television that justice delayed is justice denied. That is the way we feel.

With our experience, we were highly sceptical as to what this review might be set up to accomplish. In the interests of exploring all avenues, however, we decided to meet with the three independent expert reviewers and were immediately impressed by the way they engaged with each group in researching the issue so comprehensively. While we suspected that commissioning this review was just an exercise to again delay taking action, we have to freely commend the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, on finally commissioning an independent review. She promised a review of ash dieback as far back as the spring of 2021, but at least we have it now.

We gratefully recognise that this committee published its report entitled Issues Impacting the Forestry Sector in Ireland, dated 2 March 2021, in which it recommended practically everything to do with ash dieback resolution that we had advocated. It is regrettable that the situation was deemed urgent back then, yet none of the action needed was undertaken by the Minister of State and her officials. We are, therefore, justifiably concerned that the recommendations in this review, even though it was commissioned by the Minister of State, could suffer the same fate and be found gathering dust on the shelves of the Department many years from now, but somehow, I do not think the public will accept that.

At this point, we gratefully welcome the findings of this review and thank the three reviewers for their recommendations. Those we represent have been totally vindicated once again. Sadly, however, this is not enough. This review will only be of benefit if the recommendations are implemented in full.

Since we hosted the first national ash dieback conference in March, there has been a significant unified call from private forestry representative groups, including the Irish Farmers' Association, IFA, and organisations in the wider field, such as the Social Economic Environmental Forestry Association, SEEFA, for immediate implementation of the review recommendations.

The recommendations are quite simply set out as follows. Ash dieback is national emergency for which rapid action response is imperative because standing trees are becoming more dangerous and less valuable with each lost opportunity to deal with the disease.

Equity is needed for ash plantation owners. A new partnership arrangement, involving landowners in a designated task force to detail and manage a specific new scheme, is a must. There must be time-bound objectives and targets in the management of this scheme. The State must pay for clearance, replanting or returning to other production and offset losses encountered pending restoration to established forest status. There must be a sufficient budget set aside to cover the loss of asset valuation of the trees. Full implementation of the report's recommendations is vital to restore trust and confidence in forestry as a whole.

It is worrying to us that the Minister of State and her officials, having been given this report more than five weeks ago, have failed to approach ash dieback representative groups with a view to setting up the recommended task force envisaged in the recommendations. The ash task force must include growers. We are more than willing to play our part. That does not mean we must be the ones to do it, but our representatives need to do it. According to the report, this co-operation is warranted by such a catastrophic disease. In the sparse official utterances on the subject since the review was published, there appears to be a lack of any sense of urgency in implementing the report's recommendations or recognition that there is an emergency.

The initial response of both the Minister and Minister and State to the report was to call for ash plantation owners to sign up to the reconstitution and underplanting scheme, RUS. In light of this scheme having been utterly trashed by the reviewers as unfit for purpose and silviculturally flawed, this call is repugnant to our members. The promise now being given that if any amendments are made to the RUS, applicants will be eligible to receive them, does not go down too well with plantation owners. The report states that the process for handling and processing RUS applications was an utter failure. There is reference to workstream 3 in Project Woodland. That project is over and workstream 3 remains incomplete.