Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Cahill for sharing time. I congratulate him, as the Chairman, and all the members of the Joint committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine, for bringing forward this report.

In the short time available to me, I acknowledge the work of the Social Economic Environmental Forestry Association, SEEFA, which as an organisation has done much to raise consciousness concerning afforestation and felling issues. As we speak, in the shadow of the COP26 meeting, we are felling more trees and granting more licences to fell trees than we are granting licences to plant trees in the Twenty-six Counties. We have the forestry licensing dashboard before us to show us proof of that.

The total number of afforested hectares is 3,598, but for felling it is 24,185. We are cutting down more trees than we are planting. That is a real-time analysis of where we stand regarding forestry policy in this country. The situation must be reversed. In her speech, the Minister of State will tell us that more ecologists have been appointed. That is all well and good, and I do not doubt the bona fides of the Minister of State. However, I had a call from a woman in my area of Cork today who is tearing her hair out because she has been asked for another Natura impact statement, NIS, even though she has proposed a forestry plan to her consultant. Something is still wrong in the Department regarding how felling licences are being dealt with. Notwithstanding the appointment of more ecologists, a massive gap remains and the metrics show that clearly. If the Minister of State delves deeper into the licensing process in a way that will ensure it will be possible to get rid of the low hanging fruit, no pun intended, to enable all the smaller applications be dealt with for felling licences, then she would be doing a good day’s work.

On the afforestation side, we take our lead from people such as Jo O'Hara and Deputy Cahill, as the Chair of the relevant committee, and the Mackinnon report concerning what needs to be done to ensure proper afforestation and the proper management and felling of our forests. That must be done to ensure, in the shadow of the latest COP meeting, that we can sequester carbon and put in place, as Deputy Cahill said, through the next round of the CAP programme, a system that embeds the idea that forestry will become an integral part of that programme. Farmers will not mind if such a system is part of Pillar 1 or Pillar 2 of CAP. Forestry, however, must be embedded into eco-schemes and agri-environment climate measures. It should be self-evident to everybody in the Houses of the Oireachtas that forestry must get the prominence it deserves. It is a vital sector, and we must ensure that not only do we have a sustainable forestry sector but that we also recognise the potential that afforestation brings in helping us to meet our carbon emissions targets.

I would also support any measures put in place to address the issue of ash dieback. Those farmers, foresters and landowners are doing everything they can. Again, they are also tearing their hair out because of the inaction of the Department on this matter. We again have a situation where the facts speak for themselves. We are importing timber for our sawmills. On one hand, we have ash dieback, but, on the other, we do not know what kind of policing there is of pests such as the spruce beetle. The controls in place do not allow us to know what is coming into the country and, therefore, we do not know what is coming down the line in the context of what is being imported. We need the afforestation programme to at least hit a target commensurate with the programme for Government targets at a minimum. When I sought, in my modest way, to have sectoral targets for forestry included in the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021, let us call a spade a spade and say that the Green Party Minister refused to accept that amendment. We have a massive opportunity in this area and I welcome this report. This is a timely debate, and I thank Deputy Cahill for sharing his time.

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