Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to get the opportunity to speak. I will vote for anything that will help the forestry sector, whether it is felling licences, planning licences or the building of roads. No farmer has any problem with planting small plantations of broadleaf. Farmers did not have to be told by the Green Party, or by anyone else for that matter, to do so. That has been happening over the years in corners of fields, haggards, around houses for shelter and different places. It has been done over the ages.

Confidence in the forestry sector is totally and absolutely gone. People hear about the problems with the felling licences. Some people are getting felling licences, and I have no problem with that, but it should be fair across the board. The private foresters should be entitled to get their fair share of felling licences; that is not happening. In other countries, when someone plants a forest or plantation, the presumption is that it will be cut down when it is mature, when it is the right time and when it will make some financial sense to the owner. That is not being allowed to happen. I have heard of several cases where forestry was to be the source of funding to put a youngster through college. That has been lost. In another case, funding from forestry was to be used to make the house of a person who uses a wheelchair more accessible, with a new bathroom and improvements to the heating and other areas. That is not happening. It appears to me the green agenda is to plant no spruce and to fell no spruce. It is, rather, to plant broadleafs and forget about spruce altogether. That is the way it seems to me.

The Minister has no idea of the frustration that even contractors are enduring at present.

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