Michael McNamara (Clare, Labour)
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The Minister of State cited EU competition law as an obstacle to this amendment. While I might not support this particular amendment, who are we fooling when we are talking about free competition in Ireland? We have a dominant player in the industry. It is completely dominant, in fact. The two shareholders in that player are the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The latter, who is given vast powers under this Bill, appoints the board of that dominant player. The Minister can require existing smaller players to produce a management plan and if he does not like it, he can change the plan. He can refuse smaller players a felling licence. One would not find something like this in a post-communist state. The level of protection that is being afforded to a mollycoddled State company is incredible. I do not believe EU competition law comes into this.

One of my main objections to this Bill is that it is ill-conceived in the absence of dealing with Coillte more generally. Coillte needs to be examined closely. Company representatives appeared before the joint committee previously and we know there are huge problems in Coillte. Shifting all the regulation onto small forestry owners and farmers who decide to grow crops while not addressing the elephant in the room is unacceptable. There are vast Coillte plantations close to my home but the chipper plant in the middle of my local town closed because it could not get any timber. We look out at enormous plantations every day on Slieve Aughty and Sliabh Bearnagh but there is no timber available. That is just one of many examples I could cite. Is a light going to be shone on Coillte or are farmers the only object of this Bill?