Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We have to look to the long term. The Minister, Deputy Denis Naughten, has opposed my view of economics in his climate paper. I fundamentally challenge his economics and one of the ways in which I would challenge it is that we are not thinking long term. If we go the direction the Minister of State is suggesting, where this is just a minor research project and a couple of sites will do and where we are going to massively increase our afforestation, then we are committing for the next 40 years to another whole round of clear-felling, where we are just taking land, pumping up the forest as best we can, clear-felling it and starting again. We will end up with soil degradation and it will have an effect on our water supply. It is not a viable long-term project.

One has to think long-term in forestry. It is right for us to think long-term now and say we will think of the world in 30 or 40 years' time. The Minister of State said people involved in the lumber industry do not like the forest project because it is too big and not easy to do for the low-cost forestry outputs they are currently processing. Think differently and of what we are going to be looking for in 30 or 40 years' time. We will be using wood in a completely different way. It will be a highly valuable. It is right for us to plant now with a view to what the world will be like in 2060, 2070, 2080 and 2090. That is the economic vision we have to come to if we are going to manage climate change. It has to be a long-term vision, not a short-term business as usual approach, which is what we are going to do in forestry and is not the right business approach.

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