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

Amendment No. 23 seeks to ensure any licence granted accords with the principles of sustainable forest management. We discussed at length the need to define clearly sustainable forest management and I contend that the Rio principles on this should guide and inform how we come to that definition, but the Government has rejected my contention. This is unfortunate but sustainable forest management is referred to in section 2 so it is a condition for the issuing of licences.

We discussed the issue of Gougane Barra previously and I have spoken to people about this. It links to issues of public consultation and sustainable forest management. The Minister has defended the action as a preventative one to stop the spread of a disease but there was no real consultation with the public, concerned stakeholders, environmental groups, the community on which it will impact and so on. The so-called consultation process can be cursory and tokenistic but real active participation by all key stakeholders, including communities, environmental groups, heritage groups and those with an interest in our forests is necessary for big decisions such as cutting down much of a national park like Gougane Barra. It is necessary to hear all the arguments and consider all the evidence to ensure such big decisions are properly informed. This is what sustainable forest management is about, a real participation by everyone involved. However, this is not how things are done.

One could argue that Coillte is something of a secret society because it is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act. Perhaps the Minister of State can confirm that Coillte employees must sign a confidentiality clause that negates any commitment to public consultation. How can this square with real engagement with the community and stakeholders? It seems Coillte employees can say nothing publicly of Coillte's activities, and this is a real problem.

The decision was made to abandon the sale of Coillte's harvesting rights and afterwards the merger with Bord na Móna was announced. This merger has potentially enormous implications for the future development of a forestry model in Ireland, and some of us are concerned that the merger may have been motivated by a narrow desire to exploit Coillte's land mass resource. Forestry, in the narrowest sense of the word, could mean the facilitation of large industrial wind farms with serious implications for forests. Huge controversies have arisen over such use of Coillte's lands. For example, there has been much controversy and conflict in north Mayo over the building of a refinery there on Coillte's lands. I am speaking of big decisions on the use of public land and forestry resources.

We have to have the most stringent requirements for real engagement with the public and stakeholders when we make enormous decisions impacting on something as important as this forest and land resource. Stating that any licences granted by the Minister, to Coillte or anybody else, must be in line with sustainable forest management is a critical safeguard in the protection of our natural resources from inappropriate development, potentially environmentally-damaging development and development which could potentially damage our heritage and adversely affect other areas such as tourism, walking and mountaineering. Sustainable forest management is an holistic overall view of forestry rather than one too narrowly defined, where decisions are taken very secretively without proper consultation. This is the logic behind stating that all licences should be conditional on the notion of sustainable forest management.

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