Paul Daly (Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Hayes and Mr. O'Doherty for joining us. A famous American baseball catcher, Yogi Berra, is accredited with the quotation "déjà vuall over again" and this morning I can see where he was coming from and I am experiencing it. I agree with Deputy Fitzmaurice. Politically, I would have to oppose his actions if he were to go down that road but I certainly see why he would be driven to where he said he may have to go.

We are legislators and administrators and we are answerable to the public and the people who have skin in the game in the timber and building sectors. They are the people knocking on our doors, ringing our phones and hounding us for meetings. To be quite honest, Mr. Hayes is detached from the real world as far as I can see and totally insulated. The problem we have today sits firmly on his doorstep. He managed us into the crisis we are in today. He managed the applications stockpile. While I acknowledge European law changed and ecology requirements changed, we need a Department that is efficient enough to change with the change and stay ahead of the posse. Mr. Hayes acknowledged an applicant would be entitled to a turnaround of three to four months. It is in the farmers' charter that an applicant will get a licence within four months. It is in the 2014 Act. Mr. Hayes acknowledged we are not meeting it. What is the point of the farmers' charter? We are not abiding by the 2014 Act.

Deputy Fitzmaurice and the Chair mentioned the men who, unfortunately, are going into receivership and out of business and are having their machines repossessed because they do not have timber to harvest. This has gone much further. A 6 ft tree is, on average, €6 more expensive today than it was four months ago because of the actions at the auctions in Scotland. The Scots have cottoned on to the amount of timber leaving Scotland and coming in here and now the prices are being hiked. This drip-feeds down to somebody building a family home. It now affects the entire building sector. Jobs are at stake. People will be paying up to 40% more than they should be paying on mortgages for the next 25 or 30 years. The problem can be traced right back to the forestry section of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

Mr. Hayes did not answer Deputy Fitzmaurice's question on whether there will be changes and managerial changes in the Department. The buck stops with Mr. Hayes. The Deputy can have his vote of no confidence in the Minister. Ministers come and go but the forestry section of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has not changed. It has overseen this problem. It has brought us to where we are. I welcome the figures we have been given today but I reserve judgment on them until I see some consistency.

Mr. Hayes admitted in his statement that we have 30% of what we need for the year. If we are speaking about percentages, Monday is 31 May and that is 41.66% of the year gone. We will not speak months or weeks but percentages. The Department is behind on its figures for catching up. I will quote two lines from the submission document that was read out earlier. Mr. Hayes said converting licences into planting area must be everyone's priority and that the Department remains concerned about the continuing low conversion rate. He stated he had written to sectoral representatives to invite them to discuss this in more detail. What Mr. Hayes is saying is that even the licences being granted for afforestation are not being taken up and we are behind the curve. Is this because of what has happened in recent years, and that even people who get licences have lost confidence in the sector and may well not plant those trees? If this is the case, it is because of the management of the Department. It means we will not reach our targets of 8,000 ha. This 8,000 ha target is built into our overall climate approach for achieving carbon neutrality. If we do not reach this target, what will have to change on the other side to balance it? People speak about herd reduction. I am not in favour of this but if we do not reach the sequestration figure we will have to start legislating for areas such as this. Will Mr. Hayes accept responsibility for these consequences and the decisions that legislators and administrators will have to make on the back of his bad management that got us to where we are today?