Martin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this motion as it is a timely opportunity to highlight a potentially disastrous decision to go ahead with the sale of harvesting rights in State-owned forests. This is an issue that has caught the public attention and the highlighting by people like the Woodland League, Deputies, myself and others in recent years of the likely move on Coillte has had the positive effect of holding it up.

When news of a possible selling off of the forestry rights or even the land was first brought to attention, I referred to the interest that had been expressed by a company involving the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. It would be interesting to know whether that company, the Irish Forestry Fund, and its Swiss partner, Helvetia Wealth, are still in the running to acquire harvesting rights if and when the Government acts on the McCarthy recommendation to privatise public forestry assets.

Interest has also been expressed by the Chinese state overseas investment corporation, and I have it on very good authority that this issue was discussed during the visit of the high level Chinese diplomatic and financial delegation last year. It would be the ultimate irony if this Government was to sell off Irish state assets to another state.

It is also the case that when the possible sale of Coillte assets became an election issue in February 2011, both Fine Gael and Labour moved quickly to assure voters that they would never agree to any such sale. The now Minister of State, Deputy Sean Sherlock, rightly asked at the time: "Do we really want to end up in a situation where this for-profit company could turn around and do whatever it feels like with a natural resource that rightly belongs to the Irish people, including many of our forests, rivers and lakes?" If the Minister of State still feels that way, he knows what he should do here tomorrow night.

The same applies to Deputy Andrew Doyle who during that election stated:

Our vital national resources are not up for sale. National resources, like forestry, agriculture and marine, are held in trust for all the people of Ireland. Ministers are stewards of these resources and must return them to the people with benefits after their term in office. That includes the forests of Ireland.

I concur with what Deputy Doyle said at that time.

As the Bacon report concluded, the sale of forestry harvesting rights would "in effect bring an end to Coillte as a commercial entity". Not only would such a sale be financially bad, entailing a loss of €1.3 billion, it would also hardly make sense to have Coillte remain in existence if the objective is to realise value from such a sale. The clear implication is that a sale of harvesting rights is in effect the first step in full privatisation. It also has massive implications for other uses of the 7% of the State's land that is under Coillte stewardship. What, for example, will happen to any mineral deposits under Coillte land? A geological survey was conducted some years ago, but Coillte is very coy about what it revealed. When I raised that issue in a committee meeting before Christmas, I was told by Coillte that it has a ballpark notion of where potentially valuable mineral deposits are to be found. I wonder if some of the potential privateers also have a similar ballpark notion and if that is one of the motives for wanting to gain access to Coillte lands. I have no doubt that certain people know more about those potential deposits than the rest of us. During several debates we had on this issue, one of the aspects mentioned was that the more valuable assets of harvesting would be easily purchased and sold, but there was an acceptance that part of Coillte forestries would not realise any potential value and therefore would be left in Coillte hands.

I welcome this motion and hope that all of those who have expressed concern about the proposed sale and who have in the past gone on the record in opposition to such a sale will act in accordance with their opinion and support this motion and, more importantly, strongly oppose within Government any move towards stripping Coillte of its core assets. I trust that the Deputies I mentioned will live up to what they said prior to the election.

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