Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 22 February 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Forestry Policy and Strategy (Resumed): Discussion

Photo of Matt CarthyMatt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I must go to the Chamber. We will be meeting Coillte next week, which will be an important discussion. I suggest that we invite our two ministerial colleagues back as soon as feasible. It is not that I have any confidence in any response we might receive, but either through naivety or incompetence within the Department, they believe that they overcame a storm in January in the form of the Coillte-Gresham House deal. Not much good came of that entire debacle, but the one good thing that did was that it shone a spotlight on forestry policy and the disaster that the Minister and Minister of State are overseeing, so much so that it appears that the only people who have confidence in Irish forestry and afforestation are British venture funds. Even there, the vast majority of the land they are purchasing is land that has already been planted and, therefore, there is no environmental benefit to the purchases.

On behalf of all members of this committee, I assure our witnesses that we will not let this issue drop. I encourage other committees to do likewise, in particular the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action. Everything that committee is discussing is going up in smoke because of the Government's failures in this regard.