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

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

It is kind of appropriate, in a way, to connect any discussion about Ireland's forests to things that are important to us, to people and to places which are important to us. A play I strongly recommend to people that has just opened is Frank McGuinness's new play, "The Hanging Gardens", which is about Irish families, the places they inhabit and their roots, the roots of people and of places. There was a beautiful line in the play spoken by the father of the family who was nearing his death. The family was gathering around him in the place that was most important to them. He said to his children, "Make your refuge of the things that are most precious to you". That was his advice to his children. I thought it was a very profound and poignant line because it was about those connections of people and places and roots which are important - our personal history but also our cultural history, our tradition - and how they link the past and the present to the future.

Nothing symbolises that relationship and those precious things as much as trees and forests - maybe even more so in this country. In these straitened economic times, there is an understandable tendency to look at every issue through the prism of the balance sheet, the monetary value, and how it can help the public finances. It is understandable that we have to do that but it is often a mistake and, in something like forestry, it would certainly be a grave mistake.

Any discussion about forests needs to begin with understanding how important they are to us as a culture, as something that helps identify us as a nation and to people in all sorts of ways. Of course, they have economic value, which is important, but the beginning of wisdom is to understand just how precious the forests are to the people of this country at every level. They mark our history in the sense that they were here long before us. They sustain our life now. Without them, there is literally no existence. They breath the air we need to survive. If we do not protect them, we will not survive.

In a Bill dealing with the management of Ireland's forests, we must recognise the absolute imperative of doing everything we can to protect and nurture them because they are so important at every level now and in the future.

During the real debate about whether we should sell our public forests, the people showed how much they cared and how important the issue was. I want to give credit to the Government for listening to people because I know it is under pressure. The people spoke and the Government listened and decided to keep the forests in public ownership. We need to go further now. It is not enough to protect them by keeping them nominally in public ownership - we need to manage and nurture them in a way that will protect them long into the future and will realise their value at every level. In addition to their financial value, our forests have a cultural value as public amenities. They are vital because they literally sustain our existence.

I want to support this Bill in that regard. When this House passes the Bill I want us all to be able to say that it safeguards the future of our forests. I have to be honest and say that at present it does not do that. It expresses at the level of general aspiration what we would all want to see, but it does not do it in a way that will guarantee Irish forestry is protected, nurtured and cultivated in a way that allows it to be what it can be.

We all know we are dealing with an historical legacy when we address the management of this country's forests. This country used to be a forest nation. At one time it was totally covered in forestry but that was decimated, because of the legacy of colonialism and empire, to the point where at the beginning of the 20th century our forests were almost gone. While this State has slowly improved that situation, we are still a long way short of where we should be at in terms of forestry. The comparisons with the rest of Europe are stark. Even though trees grow almost twice as quickly in Ireland as in anywhere else in Europe, because of our climate, we have the second lowest level of forest cover of any EU member state and the lowest level of native tree cover of any country in Europe.

Our native species comprise a tiny proportion of our national forest estate. That is something we have to change, for all sorts of reasons including their amenity value. The native forests that were devastated and destroyed are our forests. They are important at all kinds of other levels. The Bill seeks to uphold some of those values, such as the protection of the environment and the maintenance of biodiversity. We cannot do these things if we do not bring about a dramatic improvement in the level of native broadleaf forest cover. The monoculture forestry of foreign species is damaging for our environment and is not conducive to the cultivation of biological diversity. The various habitats found in our native forests create the environment for animal biodiversity. The Sitka spruce monoculture of evergreen forests does not protect, nurture or enhance biodiversity; in fact, it damages it. This type of forestry leads to extensive acidification of our rivers and other waterways. Many reports suggest that this problem is at a dangerous level and cannot get any worse without poisoning our environment in a serious way. Native species deal with that problem. They do not cause such damage. They protect water, biodiversity and the environment.

We need a radical expansion of forest cover in this country to meet the targets we have set. We are aiming to have 17% forest cover by 2030. The long-term target is 30% forest cover, which would bring us up to the EU average. We are currently far short of that. The Bacon report suggested that we should be planting between 10,000 and 15,000 hectares of trees each year, but we have dramatically failed to achieve that. We are planting approximately 5,000 hectares of afforestation annually, on average, which is far short of the targets we need to meet if we are to adhere to the Kyoto climate change targets and our own stated objectives for increasing forest cover. We need to diversify the species mix and expand the amount of native broadleaf cover. It is stipulated that there must be a reasonable mix of native and foreign species when afforestation is taking place, but there is no such stipulation in the case of the replanting that is required when trees are cut down. There is no requirement that at least 50% of the trees that are planted during reforestation should be native species. That has to change. A specific provision to that effect should be included in the Bill. A species mix is needed when we are replanting after trees have been cut down, as well as when we are planting new forests. That is just one example of the sort of thing that needs to change if we are to meet our own targets.

The problem is that nothing in this Bill really ties us into meeting the objectives that have been set. We should be providing for binding targets instead of general aspirations. There is concern that many environmental organisations that are involved with forestry have not had a chance to make an input into this Bill. In the section of the programme for Government relating to legislation, the Government said there would be a shift towards pre-legislative consultations that would allow stakeholders and concerned groups to make an input in advance of Second Stage debates. We should be able to hear the forestry organisations' ideas on issues like afforestation; problems like clear felling, the industrialisation of forestry and the damage caused to the environment by monoculture; and the vital need for community and public participation in the management and control of our forests. These matters came up again and again the last time the groups were asked to make submissions, which was five, six or seven years ago. No such consultation has taken place on this occasion, even though it is important to update the input into the drafting of this legislation of experts and people who care. Sadly, the legislation reflects that fact. It is general and aspirational.

Ultimately, most of the power to deliver on the generally good aspirations in the Bill will be in the hands of the Minister, who will be responsible for the detail. There is no mention at all of the committees the Minister will be given the power to establish, or the role of community participation in trying to meet the goals and objectives of the Bill. Experts from the academic world, environment and forestry groups and other amenity users should be able to make an input into the development of the sort of forest policy we need. This has not happened.

I talked to some of those groups in recent days and they were angry that the Bill is even before us. Although they want this Bill, they thought they would have a chance to have an input into it. God knows they have shown in the past six months how much they care. We should see it as a positive that people who have a passion for forestry, who want to develop it and who see its value and importance want an input into the legislation that will develop and manage our forestry. I ask the Government in all sincerity to stall the process after Second Stage to allow for public consultation and submissions before the Bill is moved on to Committee Stage when the Bill will be amended in order that we hear those voices. I do not mean the Bill should be stalled forever - we want the Bill - but let us have a chance for people to come in.

A glaring omission is that the forestry review report, which was a good review, is also doubling up as a strategic environmental assessment of our forests, but it is doing so without the promised review of Coillte. At the same time that the forestry review was set up and started, there was supposed to be a review of Coillte. I believe, although I do not know for sure, that that review was begun but was never completed or published. How can we have a Bill to manage our forests when we do not have a review report of the biggest owner of forests? Coillte controls 50% of the forests. The Government cannot be serious about what we need to do for forestry if we do not know what is going on inside Coillte. As much as I and others fought hard against Coillte's sale, we did so in the knowledge that it has problems. We all know that, and everybody on every side of the House and at the committees when the matter has been discussed acknowledges that to be the case. We need a serious review to be completed to inform the Bill in order that it is up to standard and meets our requirements for managing our forests.

We recently discussed the Freedom of Information Bill. Some Members feel that the Bill has omissions in that semi-State enterprises are excluded from its provisions. Coillte is one such body and is therefore excluded from that Bill, which is a problem. We are talking about the public forest estate for which the public has demonstrated its passion and to which it has demonstrated its attachment, and we are not allowed to ask questions about what is going on inside a company we own, and there are serious question marks over the sale of forest land in recent years. I think the sales run into the hundreds of millions of acres. I do not have the figures in front of me, but significant areas of forest land were sold. In fact, the only way Coillte has made money in recent years is by selling off forestry. Serious questions must be asked about why it is no longer planting new forests, about the Derrybrien calamity, which saw a mountain collapse despite prior warnings, and about all sorts of other things that I do not have the time to go into.

I want a Bill passed that will do justice to the importance of our forests as amenities and as part of our culture. I have not even had the time to go into the huge potential of forestry for the creation of jobs if we are to meet our targets for 30% or even 70% forest cover. That could be an enormous boost for the country. However, none of that can be done without the information, consultation and participation of the people who care and know about our forests. I urge the Government to heed that appeal and bring those people in before we move on to the amendment Stage.

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