Dáil debates

Thursday, 24 November 2022

4:30 pm

Photo of Richard O'DonoghueRichard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I believe the Minister of State believes that farmers are going to rush into forestry to save the planet. Sorry, but that is not going to happen. The confidence is gone in the industry. Farmers were never compensated for ash dieback and, in fact, no one is even applying currently for licences for felling or thinning. This year less than 2,000 ha were set. If we were ever to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 we must have a minimum of 18% of our land under forestry. In real terms, this means that we need to be setting 18,000 ha per year to achieve an 18% land cover by 2050. Afforestation is the single largest land-based climate change mitigation measure available to Ireland to reach a net zero emissions level. This is the minimum level supported by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, but - there is a but - there is no strategy in place, so how can this aim be achieved or taken seriously?

The further this target is missed the greater the need to deliver reductions from other sources. None of the value of the carbon sequestered by forestry in Ireland is currently accredited to the growers of the trees. Why is that the case?

The cries from farmers about the layers of bureaucracy is upsetting. They have asked the Minister of State's Department to simplify the process as it becomes more and more complicated. One farmer asked me if the Department thinks we are idiots. He said that if anyone does anything in the forest within 15 km of a special area of conservation, one must submit an environmental impact assessment, with all of the costs associated with that. If one was building a factory one would hardly be expected even to do this. By the time a person receives an answer, it is too late in any event.

The decline in forestry in 2021 and 2022 is nothing short of a scandal considering all of the urgent calls from COP and the EU in the past week. I will be surprised if there will be any forest industry left to salvage.

Like any industry or business in this country - I am in business all of my life - one tries to look for the generation that one wants to support that is coming after. I asked some children what they think of forestry in this country. These were the children of people whose mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers had invested in forestry under the same Government which the Minister of State is a Member of now. They were told when the ash dieback emerged, and the Government knew it was coming in from Holland, that it sat on its hands for 12 months in advance and did nothing. This has now caused the problem with the ash dieback. All of these people trusted the Government and set the forests around this country for the future. When the time came, the Government did not even tell them that ash dieback was coming into the country and when it came to fruition in the past 12 months or two years, the Government sat on its hands again.

The Government expects that it can go back to the same people and ask them now to grow trees again after their livelihoods and their investment for their retirement has been taken, together with the investment for their children and grandchildren. The Government has shown nothing but contempt for those people who are involved in forestry. That is what the children whose families were engaged in afforestation are saying to me. All the Minister of State's Department does is to complicate it.

I am aware that the Minister of State was elected in 2019 to the council and came to the Oireachtas in 2020. I wish her well in her job but this was broken before she got here and it is off the rails now. Perhaps it is to do with the bureaucratic bull that she has to deal with within her own Department to get this thing going but, first, she must look after the people who were trying to do right in the first place if she wants to invite them back in for the future. That is what I am asking for. Look after people who have already invested and who have been burned by the Government's failure to let them know that ash dieback was coming in on the plants. It is on record that it knew beforehand, but it did nothing about it because it said that other states had not done anything. Again, like everything else with this Government, it is last to the table.

Now we have a very serious problem in this country because nobody wants to go into forestry. The first thing that the Minister of State can do now is to fix the problems of the past and encourage the people of the future to go into forestry so that they will save it in this country. That is what I am asking for and this came from the vision of children whose families are engaged in forestry.

They see no future in it after seeing their families cry for what they have lost in recent years by investing like the Government asked them to invest. When motorways were being brought through lands, they valued the forestry land at €1,000 per acre and the grassland at €12,000 per acre. They said it would cost €7,000 or €8,000 to clear the land for motorways. However, when the offer was made to subsidise them to clear the land, it was for €1,000. Fix the problems of the past and nurture it into the future. That is the only way to get forestry back on track.

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