Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are back in this Chamber discussing forestry again. It would be useful to commend the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine which has ensured that this has become and remains a prevalent issue. We know that agriculture occupies a unique role in Irish society. It is our largest indigenous sector. It does not up and leave when recession hits. It is an integral part of and the core economic driver of many of our rural communities. It also produces top quality food for people in Ireland, Europe and across the world. We also know that the climate crisis poses challenges to every aspect of Irish society. An under-recognised and under-valued fact is that because of the unique ability of farms to sequester carbon provides an opportunity for them to play a positive and important role in achieving our emission reduction targets in a way that is both environmentally and financially sustainable for the farmers concerned and the communities that depend on them.

As we are committed to reducing our carbon emissions we should equally be committed to ensuring that the cost is not borne alone by the already inadequate margins of family farm incomes. Forestry, therefore, is an area that should unite opinion among environmentalists, farmers, local communities and businesses. I have often said that a good forestry strategy is one that would deliver for the environment and for local communities. Until now, it must be said the current strategy is not delivering by any of these metrics. Climate change is happening. Every individual company and state must take action; the bigger the entity the greater the responsibility.

We know that forestry will be a pivotal part of Ireland meeting its climate action targets. I would go so far to say that if we do not deliver on forestry then we will not deliver on climate. At the moment we are nowhere near delivery. That needs to be recognised.

The programme for Government sets a target of planting 8,000 ha of new afforestation each year. We are currently reaching about a quarter of that. What is not often commented on is that all the numbers recited for 2030 and 2050 in climate action targets work under the assumption that we have actually met our 2021 and 2022 targets. Therefore in reality every year of missed milestones results in the need for even greater numbers in the coming years. Nobody I have spoken to in the sector has the slightest confidence that this will be realisable under the current framework. The implications for climate action and biodiversity plans are incredibly worrying.

The Minister of State hardly mentioned how forestry has become a dirty word in some parts of the country. The failure to engage adequately with local communities and the concentration of forestry especially the blanket planting and subsequent clearfelling of Sitka spruce in a few regions and the failure to ensure that local families, farmers and wider communities see the economic benefits of afforestation has led to widespread hostility and ill-feeling in those areas. That was and is entirely avoidable. I have said many times here that a forest is something that people should want to live beside. They should have the benefits for clean air, good living and economic benefits that afforestation can represent when it is done correctly. Those economic benefits can only happen when there is a functioning, vibrant timber industry. That means that you have to have a sustainable, constant, free-flowing supply of wood. Within that there will be a growing need for soft wood if for no other reason that we will need it to build the houses that my party wants the Government to deliver, as well as the furniture, pallets and vast array of products that can be produced most sustainably with timber.

My view has always been that when the required timber can be sustainably produced in Ireland then this is the place that it should be produced rather than Irish companies being reliant on imports. There needs to be a correct balance. One or two counties should not be expected to accommodate wildly disproportionate levels of monoculture afforestation. There must be a regional balance as well as a species balance across the board.

I acknowledge that this is an area that was in crisis prior to the Minister of State taking office and I recognise that it could not be turned around over night. But the reason we are having this debate again is not because the sector could not be turned around overnight but because it was subjected to gross mismanagement, teetering on incompetence. In 2019, prior to the formation of the Government, afforestation rates stood at a modern low of 3,550 ha. Since the Government took office we have been hitting just above 2,000 ha. The Government has been achieving that against a backdrop of a 8,000 ha target. My fundamental difficulty is that having failed to meet the target in 2020, 2021, and it will fail to meet it in 2022, the target for next year with all the additional investment is again only 8,000 ha. We will see whether it can be delivered.

There have been improvements in the licensing regime. However, I must say that farmers were responsible for 81% of all afforestation between 1980 and 2019 but the numbers involved in afforestation actually dropped from 950 to 206 between 2014 and 2019. Without farmers there will not be next or near the levels of afforestation required over the next 30 years. I acknowledge the recently published payment rates for the new forestry programme represent an important step even if their publication arose from yet further delay to an existing programme which was already two years out of date. However, the payment rates essentially amount to a single-page document. The route to restoring confidence must be through using the new forestry programme when it is eventually published in an all encompassing new covenant with our farming families. For farmers, I hope this can mean a new start for forestry and for the Government it will no doubt be its last chance to garner any credibility in this area. Back in 2019 the Mackinnon report identified a lack of political commitment as a key part of the problem. To prove that lessons have been learned, the forestry programme must be all-encompassing.

How do we get to the place where we can deliver a forestry strategy that delivers for the environment, communities, economy and industry in the first instance? It involves the investment announced but we need quick confirmation that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has signed off on the full allocation, and also a firm commitment that the ongoing debacle on forestry licensing will finally be resolved. One hundred licences per week is an incredibly soft target. It is insufficient to meet the ambition and must be revised upwards. This is an area about which I still have concerns because it has been missed for 29 weeks of this year.

We also need additional targets to ensure a fair allocation of licences to non-Coillte applicants. We have a difficulty in that this year to date, for all the improvements the Minister of State has cited, which see us getting to the point we should always have been at, only around 4,500 ha have been approved for a licence. That is not because of a backlog or EU regulations; it is the result of a systemic failure. If it is not corrected, higher payment rates simply will not lead to an increase in afforestation.

While there are some welcome innovations regarding supports for forests for water and seed orchards in particular, I remain incredibly concerned that the policy approach in other areas remains entirely unreformed beyond increased expenditure. While the expenditure is welcome, the crisis in the forestry sector goes beyond that.

The Minister of State indicated she is going to revisit the ash dieback scheme. If not, all this will count for nought. In our engagements with farmers, they cite ash dieback repeatedly as the reason they are refusing even to contemplate re-entering forestry.

We also need to ensure fairness in the system. I am sure the Minister of State is aware of the joint venture between Coillte and the British investment fund Gresham House. Many in the sector are pointing to that as a cause of genuine concern. I am sure the Minister of State is aware of the deliberations in the Scottish Parliament, where this type of scheme has been cited as involving not the expansion of community ownership but an explosion of corporate ownership. I asked the Minister of State to disavow that type of venture.

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