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

The Minister of State's good intentions and honest approach are well recognised and we will always work with him and his colleagues to devise the best approach. That is the objective of this motion. However, we will push for a vote because there is a fundamental difference in outlook and philosophy between ourselves and most of the House and Fine Gael. I do not wish to isolate Fine Gael but there is a division of approach that must be teased out and addressed.

The Minister, Deputy Creed, said something to which I wish to draw attention: "The public debate on productive forestry is of concern and does not reflect current planting systems, which are more cognisant than ever of landscape, diversity and environmental sensitivities". I differ with that. The debate is not of concern; it is vital. In fact, there are many people on the environmental side of the debate, including a range of NGOs that I will not list now, who are saying something important that must be heard. I will cite some examples. Members of Extinction Rebellion interrupted a forestry industry event in the National Botanic Gardens a few weeks ago. There was a standoff between them and the people from the forestry industry, who were saying: "We doing the right thing and we are as green as you can get." The people from Extinction Rebellion were expressing the significant anxiety that exists about the scale and nature of the biodiversity crisis we face. People were critical of Greta Thunberg's speech in New York last week but we witnessed the sense of dread and fear among many young people that we are heading towards a sixth mass extinction and what it will mean for them in their lifetimes. They cannot rest easy and hear somebody say that the public debate on this does not reflect current plantings and we are "more cognisant than ever of ... environmental sensitivities". I beg to differ; I do not believe we are.

There is a way to address those sensitivities. I was listening to BBC Radio 4 last week. I do not often do that but these days I have to listen to it to follow what is going on over there. At the end of the usual Brexit hoo-hah there was a brilliant short piece featuring the sculptor Antony Gormley. His grandfather was from Derry. He is a brilliant sculptor whose sculptures of himself are all to do with our connection to nature. He has a new exhibition in London currently. He was addressing the issue of how we are in despair at the destruction of nature. He said that we will get over that. It struck me when he said that, we will find our true nature in nature. Our connection to nature is important. If we do not have the sense that we are restoring nature and doing everything we can to create a rich natural environment around us as we face this biodiversity and climate crisis, we will go further into this despair and the public debate will get even worse. The people who have this sensitivity and sensibility will sense that the Government is all about numbers and has no sense of nature and its importance. I do not mean to be personally critical when I say that, but I am reflecting the view of many people in that community who feel this strongly.

The scale of what we must do is so great that the 8,000 ha of afforestation per year in the whole-of-Government action plan will not be commensurate with the type of carbon storage we will require, such is the crisis. We have significant potential in this country because it is such an incredible tree growing country. It has an incredible tradition and a skilled forestry and nursery sector so we should aim to think bigger and better than that. It should be 20,000 ha per year. We were doing that 25 years ago so why would we not aim for that scale now? There are vast amounts of land on which carbon could be stored through land management that would not involve plantations but a rewilding and the use of nature to do the work for us. That is what we seek to do.

The need for that is not just because of the climate and biodiversity crisis but the fact that there is an agricultural crisis in this country. It was stated on Radio Kerry, which I trust, that 60% of Kerry farmers have nobody to inherit their land and keep the farms going. Deputy Fitzmaurice might know if it is the same in Roscommon but I presume it is. The average age of a farmer is probably in the 60s. What will we do when all those people retire? Will we go with the current system where one might get a contractor in to install a monoculture plantation, leave it for 15 years and, please God, get the thinning done, and after 35 years chop it down and then do the same again? I do not believe the people want that to be the future of forestry. The people have a sense that they want to make this country the best example in the world of how to restore nature. In their deep psyche, they have a sense of crisis that we are about to lose the curlew and a range of bird species because of the way we are managing our land. This is not to do with the climate or Europe telling us to do it; it is what we are doing ourselves. The people will want to change Ireland to be the best place in the world at protecting and restoring nature.

In the case of forestry, that is not just about the numbers and the percentage of broadleaves we have. The best academic research I can find on forestry states that even native plantation forests show a lack of native forest biodiversity. It is the nature of these plantations, be they broadleaf or conifer, that there is uniform plantation all of the same age. Once the canopy is closed, it is dark and there is no undergrowth in which birds and other species can thrive. No human being can walk there because it is so dark, dense and dead relative to a real biodiverse native forest. That is not what we want. It is not doing the best or thinking big about how we could tackle the biodiversity crisis.

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