Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to speak in support of this Bill. There are 55,000 acres of forestry in County Clare. Nationally the sector employs 12,000 people and it remained buoyant during the last recession. It is a sector that should be valued in terms of licensing and felling in order to realise its full potential.

I welcome this Bill because it will make the appeals system more efficient and will reduce the backlog of appeals at the forestry appeals committee. It will also align forestry licensing with the planning process and its appeals system. County Clare is hugely impacted by all of this. Many constituents have contacted my office whose forestry applications have been in the system for inordinate and unacceptably long periods of time. They are extremely frustrated. At the same time, the building sector is running out of timber to build homes. There is a real urgency to removing the backlog which, as things stand, would take approximately two years to clear. A total of 382 objections were lodged this year and approximately 500 cases are awaiting a decision. Serial and in some instances vexatious objectors have been throwing in objections to forestry licence applications. Some of these objectors are the same ones that crop up in the planning process. Three key projects in Clare are on the back burner because of serial objectors, namely the Clonlara flood defences, the coastal erosion defences at Doonbeg and the bridge crossing at Killaloe. As we grasp this issue in the context of agriculture and forestry, we must also introduce pre-qualifying rules for those who object to planning applications. Someone living in Rathmines has no basis for serially objecting to planning applications in County Clare.

Finally, I hope that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine will encourage more of a mix of broadleaf trees. There has been a 2% increase in the planting of such trees in the past year but we need to see far more. In my constituency we have the Cratloe wood, timbers from which were used to roof the House of Commons at Westminster. It is a fabulous wood but there are lots of conifers in there now, driving out native species. We need to see more native trees being planted in there again.

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