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

I welcome the fact the Minister of State has acknowledged that point and the need to address this but our approach to this issue needs to be more robust or aggressive. We are still falling way short. We are completely underutilising public land that could be developed and that would not be useful for other purposes. The McCarthy report suggested that Coillte has 0.5 million acres that might not be suitable for narrowly commercial forestry but in terms of long-term forestry to meet climate change targets and so on, it is just sitting there and could be used. We should be examining those 0.5 million acres. Are motorways planted? We should consider other land that is not being used for other things. Are we planting it? Have we got a plan to get up to the 10,000 ha of planting?

There are young people in my area who are so exercised about the issue of climate change that they have gone to the local council and said they want to get out and plant trees. We need programmes to encourage that kind of initiative and the use of public land as well as trying to encourage and incentivise farmers.

See this speech in context