Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Minister had his chance to speak.

By definition those entities are not concerned with public access. That is not their job. I am not making a moral statement, just an objective statement of fact. They are interested in making money. Public access, maintaining biodiversity, meeting climate change targets, creating jobs for the economy or creating revenue for the State will not be their priorities. Those are our priorities, as a society, but a private company's priority is to make money for the company. That priority will conflict with the objectives we as a society would have for forestry, to protect its environmental integrity and to protect it as a piece of our heritage and history and, yes, as an economic asset, but for every citizen of the country and not just for one or a number of private entities.

In the forestry sector there is perhaps no clearer example of where environmental, heritage and social concerns cross over directly with economic interests. In Ireland, more than any other country in Europe, our environment is our economy, and forests are a critical part of it. The forests, the sea and the land are our economy, or a critical and indistinguishable part of it. Historically, the State has recognised that in the case of farming, but, sadly, we have not recognised it in the case of forestry and perhaps fishing, to the detriment of those sectors. The evidence is clear - 12,000 jobs, 18 million tourist visits, approximately €0.5 billion in revenue generated from domestic and foreign visitors and €2.2 billion in annual output from the forestry sector. The Minister will be familiar with the statistics.

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