Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

To clarify, 1 million tonnes of timber are stuck in the appeals process at the moment, which is 25% of the independent requirement. Another 1 million tonnes are stuck at the application stage. Deputies, including the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, asked about statistics, so I will outline a couple. In the past four years, the FAC has heard only 33% of the appeals that have been put forward. In the middle of the greatest crisis the industry has ever seen, the committee has held no hearing since 31 July. What message does that send to the industry? The total number of appeals is 739 and the total number heard is 239, leaving 500 outstanding.

I will not name anybody, but is it not extraordinary that 80% of those appeals were made by two individuals? That is not right or normal. It is similar to what happens in a local authority. Deputies spoke about people's right to make objections and I could not agree more. People have the right to make genuine objections. If a person is affected detrimentally, whether because a house or a forest is being built, and if it will impact on the person or his or her family or community in some way, he or she should absolutely be entitled to make an objection or appeal. How could it be normal, however, for two people to have made 80% of the appeals clogging up the process? How could that be right or acceptable? We have to legislate against such behaviour, in the exact same way that a local authority deals with objections to planning applications. Is it not the same thing?

The majority of normal people go through their lives without ever having to object to someone else's planning application, yet there are serial objectors who continually hound their friends - if they have friends - their neighbours and the people in their communities by lodging objections to planning applications. That is not normal behaviour. I know of individuals who at this minute have five, ten or 20 objections pending on people's planning files. Nobody will ever convince me that is normal or acceptable behaviour. I agreed with the Leas-Cheann Comhairle earlier when she stated people have to have the right to appeal and object. She is 100% correct, but it is 100% wrong that there are serial objectors. That is not normal behaviour. It is not right and it does not make common sense for any one person or two persons to choke up a whole industry and hold it to ransom. That is not right. It does not make sense.

I hope the Deputies who gave false information during the debate, because of some stupid tweet they read on their computers, will listen to the facts I outlined a moment ago about the millions of tonnes of timber that are standing in forests and that should be processed. The forests have gone beyond the time in which they should have been harvested, and damage is being done to them because they are not being thinned or clear-felled in a timely fashion.

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