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

The Minister of State welcomes my positive attitude and I welcome his. While there are different forest management approaches and so on, overwhelmingly, the forestry sector has been focused on one system, namely, the big industrial single species clear felling system with sitka spruce. We need to move away from this system. The situation in Gougane Barra is possibly an indication of why we must move away from this approach. What happens if the forestry sector in Ireland which has the potential to create jobs and so on is suddenly hit - it is very vulnerable to this because we are so focused on one species and one approach to forestry - by a serious disease that wipes out a substantial portion of our currently economically valuable forestry? That would be a disaster and it could happen given what happened in Gougane Barra. The point about this approach and specifically promoting and upgrading the importance of developing this type of forestry system is that it is more resistant because it encourages a greater level of biological diversity and, therefore, a type of immune system against threats, diseases, bad weather and so on. That is the reason I suggest we need to recognise specifically the need to develop forestry in this direction.

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