Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputies Carthy and Nolan. There is a significant lack of confidence within the forestry sector at the moment. In the past five years, we have gone from 16 farmers a week planting trees to just two doing so each week. The saplings produced here are being exported to Scotland and timber is being imported into Ireland for processing here.

A stark example of the current crisis is the ongoing delay in processing forestry licences which is fair on neither the applicants nor the people who are genuinely affected by an application to plant or fell trees. This is sending out a message to farmers seeking to plant to steer clear of the forestry sector. The target set for this year is the issuance of 28 more licences each week compared with 2020. However, that cannot be the measure of success. It must be assessed on the rate of net planting.

At the same time that we are demanding that agriculture do far more to address the challenges of climate change, the single most effective tool to meet that challenge, namely, the forestry sector, is being ground to a halt as a result of an inaccessible licensing system and the lack of any overall constructive and can-do approach to afforestation within the Department. There has been a dramatic decrease in the number of farmers involved in afforestation, leaving Ireland far short of the required target of 8,000 ha annual afforestation set out in the climate action plan. In fact, this year we will achieve just one quarter of that. We need a radical overhaul of the system to clear the bottle necks and ensure there are maximum timelines for the processing of licences.

However, we need to go much further than that. Afforestation must become a fully integral part of the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, and the agri-environmental schemes. At present, if you are on the GLAS scheme and you plant, you will have to pay back every penny you have received under GLAS. That is not the approach that needs to be taken in the context of an environmental scheme. We need to ensure that agri-environmental schemes actively encourage the planting of forestry. There is no doubt that in order to provide sufficient encouragement for farmers to enter, re-enter or remain within the forestry programme, we must have sufficient supports in place. Those cannot just be economic benefits, but also clear assurances of a fair engagement within and with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

I wish to raise a proposal that has been brought to me by students at Coláiste Éinde Galway who are seeking a children's forest, or foraois na bpáistí, initiative. The idea is that a native tree would be planted for every schoolchild on the island of Ireland and that those trees would be planted on a single site to create a national park dedicated to children.

As the Minister of State is aware, there is huge anxiety out there among young people, at the moment, in terms of climate change. There are just over 800,000 schoolchildren in the country. Would it not be great for the Government to introduce an initiative to plant a broadleaf tree for every single one of those children across the country so that everyone can be seen to do their bit?

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