Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is a crisis in the forestry sector and it needs to be urgently addressed. This is an industry in which thousands of jobs are at risk in rural areas where there is little or no alternative employment. In Laois-Offaly alone, for example, almost 100 workers are reliant, either directly or indirectly, on the forestry sector in timber production, sawmills and so on. Some of these workers are already on short-time work due to the crisis. The crisis is very real for sawmills in the likes of Coolrain, Mountrath and Portlaoise, where families are worried. Supplies of wood are reaching a critical point for the construction and biofuel industries. The sawmill in Portlaoise has scaled back production of wood pellets and cannot meet demand. It is estimated that only about 25% of logs that are needed are in the supply chain and have been approved for licences.

It has got to the point where we are importing timber into Ireland to meet demand. Some Deputies will be aware of the alarming case of timber imported from Germany that was contaminated with the bark beetle, an insect that led to 32 million cu. m of German timber having to be disposed of in 2019. We cannot allow such an incident to occur in Ireland. We need to reduce our dependency on imported timber and allow our industry to get back to work.

We support the substance of the Bill and will certainly not argue it is not needed, but we will submit a number of amendments aimed at dealing with bottlenecks in the granting of licences and to make the appeals system work more efficiently and fairly. We support the proposal for a modest fee for those who want to lodge appeals or submissions on the granting of licences, but it must be capped at a reasonable sum; it should not be a barrier. The forestry appeals committee must be adequately resourced to clear the backlog to allow it to deal with licences much more quickly. Farmers in Laois have forestry they cannot harvest and their applications are lodged in the queue of the appeals system, going nowhere for months on end, which is not good enough. Legislation will be worthless unless we invest the resources.

We need a new forestry policy to increase the number of broadleaf trees, improve biodiversity, increase carbon sequestration - forestry can play a major role in this - and promote unfarmed forestry, not forestry as a replacement for farms.

We ask that these issues be taken on board. We will support the Bill, although we will table amendments to it.

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