Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Minister of State well in her new portfolio. As others have said, the Minister in the last Government, Deputy Creed, ignored everything to do with agriculture and rural Ireland. He would not deal with the beef barons and other issues. This legislation is an effort but it is feeble and a little inept. We have tabled many amendments to try to strengthen the Bill, and I thank Brian in our office for putting them together. I hope the Minister of State will not reject amendments that are well meant, as she did in the Seanad. We understand rural Ireland. We are all from rural Ireland. I am not being anti-Dublin. We have no issue with Dublin people. As Deputy Crowe said, there should be more planting in parks. Beyond that there is a huge housing crisis. I hear Deputy Boyd Barrett and everyone else talking about that every day, but we do not have the timber to roof the houses. We are importing it from Russia and other places. It is shocking.

I salute Medite in Clonmel and Smartply in Waterford for their excellent skills and the employment they provide, as well as the excellent use they make of the finished product. They have come on in leaps and bounds. Pat Beardmore is the manager in the Medite plant. They provide 300 jobs between them. At the moment, the sector is grinding to a halt - it is below its knees - because of objections. The Department must take some responsibility because it has not dealt with it fast enough. As I said yesterday, the tree huggers started objecting, often from hundreds of miles away. I have no problem with planning, whether it is planning for a hen house or a Georgian building, because there has to be a process and a right of objection where someone is materially affected with light, roads or anything else, but people hundreds of miles away do not have a right to object and hold up progress. It is shocking. There are farmers who planted forests 45 years ago as a pension scheme. Some of them got grants to do it and some of them planted good land, which is a shame, but they played their part. Now it is ready to harvest and they are not allowed to cut it. They are being held up for two years.

Some forestry contractors have equipment worth €2 million. They were encouraged to buy it because a far greater output was expected. We are only at a quarter of the output we should be producing. Then there are the hauliers and the many sawmills. I salute Sheehans in Burncourt, O'Gradys in Hollyford and indeed Drohan sawmills in Clonmel, named after the late Frank Drohan, a freedom fighter, which is now run by Junior Pollard. There are many sawmills, and I have only mentioned a few. They give employment and are a source of joy especially at this time of year as people order their Santa cribs and playhouses and other goods for Christmas. They supply an urban market as well as a rural one.

This is now complete chaos. The last Fine Gael Government and its Minister, supported by Fianna Fáil under the confidence and supply agreement, forgot completely about rural Ireland. One would think none of them lived there. They abandoned rural Ireland across a plethora of issues, as did successive Governments over the last 15 years. However, this is a crisis. We talk about the environment, emissions and what new planting can do but all these people want to do is harvest their crops. They will be getting contractors in soon and then they can plant anew - and they can look at planting different types of trees - but they cannot cut them. What other section of society would put up with not being allowed to have their harvest? We saw what happened with Keelings, which brought people in from abroad in the middle of the Covid lockdown to do its harvest. We have seen supports for the harvest of corn in different years. If the harvest is rich the labours are few. If there is no harvest, industry has nothing. They are being denied all that. It is time that the serial objectors are stopped.

It is worth €2.3 billion to the economy, mostly the rural economy. I have seen how the forestry sector can build roads better than most county councils, to be fair to them, and could teach the councils a thing or two and they have drainage systems that are impeccable.

We need to look after the jobs, the farmers and the contractors. These are people who have made huge investments, including in machinery and trucks. The sawmills have upgraded their machinery to make the final product for building houses and roofs. I am doing a renovation myself and the builder has had great difficulty in getting timber. How are we to build houses if we do not have the materials? We have the cart put before the horse. I need honesty, integrity and openness with this legislation. We need a review mechanism that will allow us to see how it is working after six months. This cannot come fast enough to allow these people to breathe. Some of them have sick siblings or spouses, and they want to pay their pension scheme. We should remember that these farming and business people are denied the fair deal. We cannot be kicked all the time because we need to be allowed to live. We will generate the work, employ people and improve the economy.

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