Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I will deal with Coillte now. The reason we are very suspicious about a continuation of the sale of our harvesting rights is precisely because of the role of Coillte to date. The history of this organisation has been one of intrigue since its inception. It was set up by Haughey, Burke and MacSharry. The Irish forestry service was handed over to businessmen to run it with a commercial remit. That sounds good on paper except when one knows that this activity is taking place behind closed doors without any transparency, and without it being open to freedom of information or anything like that. Desirable forestry policy should be about a strategic goal to develop our environmental targets and job creation, for example. Instead there has been a selling off of harvesting rights on 40,000 acres. The money gained from that selling off was used to shore up bad pension decisions made by the same organisation. Not only that, the organisation sold it back to itself under a different guise with other private concerns without the public having any access to that information.

I fully and clearly support the calls of the Woodland League that Coillte should be subject to a public inquiry and that there should be a suspension of all sales until these matters are investigated. That is the only way to begin to develop our forestry properly as a proper public concern, one which would be run in the interests of the population and which has massive potential for job creation. It is ironic that this Government is discussing this matter in the same week as we were all given a glossy booklet about action on jobs. What a joke in terms of this Government's record on jobs. Meanwhile, we have a vital potential amenity and resource which is totally under-utilised and underdeveloped. Points have been made in this Chamber that Switzerland, a country half the size of Ireland, has double the amount of forestry. They employ ten times as many people in this industry as we do in Ireland. That is the way forward if we are to talk about job creation, sustainability and environmental commitments. The first step is to democratise Coillte, to hold it to public account. To date, it has failed miserably in the task which it was set up to undertake.

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