Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I welcome the witnesses. Jerry Donegan, God be good to him, was our local forester when I was growing up. He would be in a Hillman Hunter on a Friday in the middle of the day when I used to break out of school. He was my next-door neighbour. I used to sit into the passenger seat with a biscuit tin box full of brown envelopes. His job on that day would be to go around, paying the men. I was absolutely delighted. My emphasis has been on paying the Coillte men who were working in our local forests. At that time, we had five Coillte foresters and we had 60 Coillte forestry workers working on the ground. Over the past four decades, things have got so bad that Coillte's presence on the ground does not exist anymore as it has made a conscious effort to get rid of all of the staff on the ground. There is no such thing as community foresters anymore.

I remember an occasion when there was a fire in a Coillte plantation and not one person in Coillte could be found in Kerry at the time to take charge of that fire. Is this the model going forward, to have no staff on the ground to answer questions? We have no forestry men, we have no service, and we have no community people working locally. We cannot point a finger at any house and say a person is working for Coillte. It does not exist. That looks very bad and it is very bad. Coillte has moved from having its own staff doing the work on the ground to contractors getting paid as little as possible. I must declare that I was one of those workers working for as little as possible for Coillte, carrying out sodding for the Department long ago when it was the Department of forestry.

What is happening now is that forests that were clear-felled in the 1980s have been clear-felled again, and there has been a massive drop in production. One would not have to be a professional forester to realise there are not as many trees growing in these areas as there should be, and what is there is not being maintained because, again, Coillte has no workers on the ground.

Is there a policy at present for Coillte to recruit foresters in the private sector? I would like the witnesses to clarify that. Has Coillte appointed staff to go after foresters from the private sector? I understand Coillte is back in the marketplace. We have spoken about that and I have heard the witnesses answer in regard to buying land. Coillte's plan is to plant 100,000 ha by 2050, which is obviously competing directly with the small farmers we were speaking about earlier who are trying to increase their holdings. Do the witnesses think this is right and fair? What research has been done by Coillte on the impact this will have on farming in rural Ireland? Will Coillte make the research it has available to this committee?

I see from the Minister’s diary and the Department diary that there have been many meetings between Coillte, the Minister and officials in the past two years. Will the witnesses give a detailed account of how many meetings have taken place? Do they think this is giving Coillte an unfair advantage over private companies? If those companies had not been in existence in recent years, nothing would have been planted at all. It was not thanks to what Coillte was doing that anything was planted, that private foresters were supported or that farmers were encouraged. It was only by the efforts of the private companies that were trying to encourage the private farmers to plant land. That was the only way we got anything planted.

Is it true there are people in the Department dedicated to working on the Coillte files alone? This is very important. I would like the witnesses to clarify whether the answer is “Yes” or “No”. There is a perception and the statistics are definitely there to back it up - this has come before the Chairman - that Coillte was able to get licences where the private farmer could not.

The Chairman will be glad to know I am finishing. Those are my questions. The sweeter, shorter and straighter the answers the witnesses can give, the better, in the nicest possible way. God be good to him, but when are we going to see the new young Jerry Donegans on the ground? At present, Coillte has nothing. It has no presence and it is not there on the ground for the people. That is wrong.