Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will be as brief as I can, but I cannot believe that the Minister would come out with that statement. The tail is truly wagging the dog. The Green Party is practically lifting the dog of Fianna Fáil, which is a pup now. Fianna Fáil was a party that I was proud to be a member of, but it is nearly facing extinction. The way it is going, it will be extinct. A preservation order will be placed on what is left of it.

This is outrageous. There is a backlog now. Could the Minister not deal with it before setting out in legislation that all future applications would have a timeline applied as is the case with, for example, building a house, a factory or anything else? I have respect for the Minister, but he came out with a diatribe. Here we are with the Green Party and talk of touch-me-nots and political interference. The Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is not happy with a former Senator being appointed to a bank. The Green Party is the moral fibre of the Government, yet this will be at the discretion of the Minister of State. She will decide every appeal even though we as public representatives are no longer allowed to have planning meetings on site with planners and constituents. Everything is all above board, fancy and trimmed up now and we cannot interfere, yet a Minister of State of the self-righteous party that will put respect into politics will now have the right to decide when is long enough and how long is a piece of string. Deputy Boyd Barrett stated that Coillte alone granted 350 felling licences on one day and 800 on another. The Minister of State will be up all night and all day going through every appeal. If she thinks it has gone on for long enough, she will then decide.

It is being dressed up, but we know that this is a contrived and convoluted three-card trick meant to prevent forestry farmers and ordinary people from developing their woodlands and harvesting their crops. The Minister and his backbenchers will fall in and vote for this through the lobby. It is a con job. If it looks like a con and walks like a con, it is a con. That is not lost on us or the people watching, whose jobs are in peril or who have bank loans. The Government allowed the banks to remove the moratorium today. This Bill is just sending lambs to the slaughter, but Government Deputies will be the lambs to the slaughter. I am just afraid that there will be no abattoirs left to deal with them.

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