Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We have done well. I am glad to say I got a call from Coillte yesterday informing me it had decided to abandon the sale. Coillte tried to suggest that the sale was not finalised. I will inform the House that there were for sale signs all around the forest when I went there. Killegar forest was being advertised on an estate agent's website so Coillte had planned to sell it. Intervention and public outcry stopped it.

When Coillte phoned me, I was told it was considering selling because access problems were impeding the Killegar's commercial viability. That points to one of the big problems with forestry in this country, which is that Coillte's mandate is all wrong. It is linked to commercial viability rather than the expansion and protection of the forest estate, issues such as biodiversity and supporting farmers in developing afforestation as a viable livelihood rather than a problem for them. The Government should consider revisiting the Act governing Coillte and changing Coillte's mandate in that context.

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