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

I move amendment No. 33:

In page 12, line 11, to delete "have regard to" and substitute "ensure that".

This relates to the Minister's safeguarding of the environment, the requirement that the Minister should take into account the social, economic and environmental functions of forestry and follow the best forest practice. Many points have already been made in previous discussions on other amendments but one cannot overstate the importance of this being a requirement of the Minister rather than just something he or she should consider. The value of forests is varied and often the forestry model applied here - as I and others have said - is too narrow. We need to broaden our understanding of forestry. We have discussed this and the Minister of State has indicated we should discuss it further after we finish debating this Bill. He has informally suggested that we could have statements on how to develop forestry, and no matter what occurs with this Bill and amendments, that would be a welcome development. Many people want some input into how we develop the forestry model in this country to its potential. Some feel that the current model being pursued is too narrow and does not fully realise its potential. Some people would argue there are serious threats to forestry because we are pursuing too narrow a model at times.

This amendment comes from the idea that the Minister should not just have regard to this issue but it should be required that he or she would take into account the economic, environmental and social impact on forestry and follow the best forest practice rather than just good forest practice, which is not really defined.

It should be defined specifically by national forest policy and by national forest standards. We are trying to be more specific about the meaning of “best forest practice”, which is not always terribly well defined. It is too vague and therefore one can define it any way one likes. Our definitions of these things need to be tighter.

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