Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief. Firstly, I support the amendment. It is a laudable one and worthy of support. Certainly, the Labour Party seeks to speak in support of the amendment.

When the climate action Bill was before us we sought to put forward amendments to provide for specific sectoral targets for afforestation. The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications refused to accept those amendments. It was disappointing to say the least. We thought it would have been quite an obvious thing for the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, to take on board given the pronouncements from that part of Government on the desire to ensure we reach afforestation targets throughout the State. I welcome, therefore, this approach by Sinn Féin which merely asks the Minister to lay a report before Dáil Éireann on the level of afforestation per LEA. It is a reasonable amendment.

When you look at the forestry licensing dashboard, which has become the tool we all use for information on the number of afforestation licences and felling licences issued, we can clearly see that while there was an increase in September, October and November, there was a reduction of December. Obviously, January's figures have yet to be published. It seems to me that when you parse the afforestation licences that have been granted, small farmers or private landowners - mainly farmers - received about 26 felling licences. The vast bulk of them are going to Coillte. It received almost double that amount, at 51 licences and that is a constant trend. What I am asking the Minister to do, in supporting this amendment, is to use his good offices to start ensuring that where planting licences, or even felling licences - as there is a natural rate of felling as well - are being applied for, that he remove the impediments to that. There are still too many. I am finding that where felling licences are being applied, smaller farmers who own tracts of forestry are feeling an inordinate amount of stress and strain in respect of the processes they must go through and the hoops they must jump. They are not rich people. They are people who planted in good faith. They are people who sought to look to the future. They are people who want to grow trees again and reapply for afforestation licences. However, the system still has not worked through the issues that have been so well highlighted by the agriculture committee under the chairmanship of Deputy Cahill. We are not seeing enough of a seismic shift to reach those afforestation targets the Government itself has set.

This amendment is a very sensible one. If the Minister could meet its proposers on this and support the amendment it would give us a greater degree of transparency and move towards the setting of the clearer targets that are badly needed if we are to meet our sequestration goals, carbon reduction goals and all the self-evident goals I need not explain. There is a real willingness and desire now by forestry owners to plant but there is still too much of a weighting against them in terms of the bureaucracy and the technocratic mechanisms that are in place and it is preventing that from happening. If they can be worked through it would assist the process greatly.

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