Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Ba mhaith liom mo thacaíocht iomlán a chur leis an rún seo. I thank the Green Party for bringing the motion. It is very comprehensive. The Minister has left the Chamber. It strikes me, although it probably sounds a bit flippant, that he cannot see the woods for the trees in respect of the amendment he has tabled and the speech that was made. In his speech, the Minister referred to "evidence-based" and then did not show any evidence whatsoever. He actually ignored the evidence that has been brought to our attention, mostly by non-governmental organisations, which is always very difficult. They have to operate on very little money and educate us politicians. I want to pay tribute to them. I make these comments, as I have on many occasions since 2006, in the context of the climate change that is facing us. In The New Yorkerrecently, Bill McKibben put it very succinctly: "Climate change is a timed test, one of the first that our civilization has faced, [and probably the last] and with each scientific report the window narrows."

We see with the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change how the window has narrowed even more in respect of our oceans. It sets this out in a stark fashion in a special report on the ocean and the cryosphere in a changing climate. We had the biodiversity report earlier in May. In each of these reports, the writers make it easy for us because they do a summary entitled "Summary for Policymakers" - that is us. I do not like the word but it is like the dumb guide to the various issues. I include myself in that. The report on biodiversity earlier this year told us that the diversity within species, between species and ecosystems, is declining faster than at any time in human history. The Minister, Deputy Madigan, totally agreed with this in a speech on 29 May. I found that heartwarming. She actually said that we are losing biodiversity around the globe at a rate unprecedented in human history. She went on in her speech to say that there are five main drivers of biodiversity loss in Ireland. She listed them and the first one was intensive agriculture and forestry practices. She actually accepted that forestry practices are one of the main driving forces in biodiversity loss. I would have thought that tonight, instead of coming in with an amendment that makes no sense and a speech that leaves out scientific evidence, for a Government that has been forced to declare a climate emergency, perhaps at this point the Minister's speech might have been based on facts just to give us a little hope. It might have been based on learning. All of us have made mistakes in our lives and certainly the policy on forestation has been a mistake.

Like all other speakers, I want to pay tribute to Coillte and to the number of jobs it creates, over 12,000 direct and indirect involved, and of course the experts going to England and all that Brexit entails. I have only a few minutes and I cannot go into all of that. What I want to go into is the absence of evidence on the part of the Minister. I remember being in the audiovisual room when Science Foundation Ireland came in with other groups and told us the importance of politicians leading by developing policy based on evidence. Where is it tonight? I would have thought the Minister who has left would have come in and told us what change has been made since Ireland's report to the EU Commission on habitats and species listed in the annex of the habitats directory. They said forestry ranked as the second greatest pressure and threat on designated habitats and species in Ireland after agriculture. That is evidence based. Perhaps the Minister of State, Deputy Doyle, might be able to tell us what the up-to-date position is.

Then I asked myself how this is happening. Social Justice Ireland captured it in its policy document, which refers to policy incoherence in the Government's pursuing policies such as Food Harvest 2020 and Food Wise 2025, and the increase in emissions that these will yield, while simultaneously committing to national targets for sustainable development and emissions reduction. There is total incoherence in policies. That is what is happening here. Incoherence in policy is very evident in our approach to forestry and the Government's forestry programme from 2014 to 2020. Nowhere is that brought home more than in the mid-term review. They very sensibly carried out a mid-term review of that policy, which is welcome. Quite depressingly, the authors of the review go out of their way to tell us it was not a review of policy. Imagine not doing a policy review of something that started in 2014. They are reviewing it simply in respect of measures and targets but not policy, despite the increasingly urgent information coming to us on climate change and the importance of forestry in mitigating climate change. Even though they do not review the policy and they continue on as is, the review is a very significant document because it tells us that the Government was completely behind target. This was in February 2018. There was an underspend and an absence of monitoring. In the speech tonight we seem to have jumped up, like in a fairytale, to have a forest of broadleaf trees. As I understand it, we have barely 13% of our land surface in forestry - almost 11% - and of that, less than 2% is broadleaf trees. If the Minister of State is telling me, as the speech did, that it has gone up to 69%-----

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