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

The Minister has said this question has been asked previously and getting an answer to it is particularly important in the context of the possible, or proposed, sale of harvesting rights. No doubt the Minister will say that is a different issue and that we are not selling the land, just the harvesting rights. In that context, if the profitable bit of State forestry is taken over by private interests and we are left with responsibility for the maintenance of the rest, the pressures on whatever agency is left running the rest to be sold further down the line because it will not have the means to generate revenue will become very great. I certainly believe we will be on a slippery slope towards full-scale privatisation of forests. That is the reason we should not even consider starting down that road.

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