Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact that the Bill is before the House and will bring a bit of legal certainty to this matter. It is something I raised in the Minister's absence yesterday. I welcomed her yesterday and congratulate her on the birth of her baby.

I have a question mark over the approach taken. It seems to be all duck or no dinner. Deputy Calleary outlined in 2009 the many reasons put forward for the proposed changes, and I can only imagine that they were along the lines of what Deputy Boyd Barrett has stated, namely the need for legal certainty. If there is a right of way, people should know that it exists. People need to know to whom the right of way accrues. Is it a public right of way that anybody can use or is it a private right of way that accrues to the owners of another property nearby that they pass over in the case of rights of way?

At the moment, there are rights of way by prescription and there may be public rights of way by prescription. Certainly, there are public rights of way that are not registered. Most would have been acquired through lost modern grant. A purchaser of a property may not necessarily know whether there is a right of way over that property. I presume these changes are being proposed with a view to bringing about legal certainty so that people can look a map, such as a Property Registration Authority map if necessary, and know whether there is a right of way.

That was what was proposed. Obviously, it was not very well advertised and a lot of people who enjoy rights of way did not register them. Something had to be done. The matter is now being resolved in this manner, which is simply to repeal the provisions. I understand this involves sections 33 to 39, inclusive. That goes back to the old system which does not require lots of people to institute legal proceedings against their neighbours, which is a good thing. They will not have to institute them between now and the end of November, with all of the chaos that would cause. The courts are already backlogged enough because of the measures taken in response to Covid-19 without adding that burden to them.

Why is it all duck or no dinner?

Could the deadline not have been pushed out and perhaps well-advertised, rather than just abandon the reforms that were sought to be introduced in 2009?

The other striking matter is Coillte, public rights of way and rights of way over public lands. Coillte lands are not public lands. They are owned by a State entity called Coillte. I believe we must re-imagine and re-question what Coillte and the land estate owned by Coillte are for. I can give an example. There is a wind farm proposed on Coillte lands not far from where I live. It is at the top of Slieve Bernagh and is called Carrownagowan. It takes in a number of townlands including Drummod, Coolready and Inchalughoge, but locals would know it as the congo. It is planted. In fact, Coillte put an amazingly ugly scar on Slieve Bernagh. It was a fire break, and Coillte just went in with diggers. I do not think it even had planning permission - it was 15 years ago - and it just cleaved into the mountain and dug everything out of it over an area that is about 10 m wide. It goes right up from the base. All soil was taken out so that fires could not spread. All the land is planted by Coillte and people walk it regularly. It is scenic. If one goes to the other side of it, one looks down onto Lough Derg. If one stays on the east side, one looks at the plain that the Shannon once flowed through as it went out through the Fergus delta rather than cutting through Killaloe-Ballina. Many people walk the land now. Coillte does not block that, but it does not do much to facilitate it.

As part of the promise to the local community, it is going to give a little money here and there. It is the usual stuff that developers do. Perhaps the State might act more gracefully or graciously, but this is the way Coillte is approaching this. It will give a little money to a GAA club here and some money to a GAA club there. It will open a visitor centre if it gets planning permission for the wind farm. What is stopping it doing any of this now? What is stopping it giving money to GAA clubs now? It is making money out of the area. It has vast areas planted. They are effectively dead. It is a monoculture Sitka spruce plantation, like the vast majority of plantations owned by Coillte. It will clear fell it and it will be like something from the "Mad Max" film by the time it is done with it. Nothing will live in it. There will be neither a squirrel nor a deer. Coillte will rape the countryside, as it does. It is not doing anything wrong; it is just doing what it is required to do by the law of this land, which is made by this Parliament. It will carry out its mandate and rape that mountain. It will give nothing back, not even a goalpost to the GAA club and certainly not a visitor centre because by the time it is clear felled, it will be the last place in the world one would want to be unless one is filming a post-apocalyptic film such as "The Road". That is what Coillte is about at present.

It has a couple of PR exercises. It has a new type of forestry in Connemara - Deputy Ó Cuív probably knows more about it - that is more sympathetic to the environment and so forth, but it is still just a tokenistic presence. The main focus of what it does is the monoculture Sitka spruce plantations. I have just spoken about the one on Slieve Bernagh. There is another on Slieve Aughty which is just across the valley in which I live. It stretches from Scariff up to Gort over to Loughrea and back. I have invited the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Senator Hackett, to come and see the environmental destruction that has been wrought on the side of Slieve Aughty, but she visited the Irish Seed Savers Association instead. If one is looking for a PR shoot, one would go there. The Irish Seed Savers Association is great and what it does is fantastic. I would go there for my photograph rather than go to look at the handiwork of Coillte. However, we have to examine what Coillte does in terms of our environment and the impact it is having. It is not just Coillte. Coillte happens to be State owned, so it is within our remit or capability to address that. There are many large-scale private forestry owners who do the same, but their private property rights are guaranteed by the Constitution. It is not just in terms of the environment, but in terms of the amenity that forestry is in Austria and most countries, as Deputy Boyd Barrett said, and that it could be in Ireland. There is a tourism potential for this that is not being exploited. Aside from tourists, this is an amenity for our people and it is one that must be examined and exploited into the future.

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