Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

One of the reasons the issue of a political donation to Deputy Donohoe is so damaging to politics is because it is distracting from issues that would otherwise be dominating the debate and discussion in this House this week.

One of those is the utterly scandalous and unacceptable proposal by Coillte to partner with an UK equity fund to buy up thousands of hectares of land and forestry in this country where public money and a public company in which the Minister of Finance owns 99% of the shares will be subsidising and facilitating a corporate takeover of Irish land and forestry that could reach up to 100,000 ha, as part of Coillte’s plan for afforestation. This is 250,000 acres, which is an area the size of County Carlow, to be potentially handed over to vulture and equity funds. That is completely unacceptable.

I wish to inform the Taoiseach that this Thursday, to coincide with the special debate on Coillte which we requested and the Government has allowed, there will be a protest outside the Dáil organised by the recently-established Save Our Forests – Save Our Lands alliance. This alliance now involves about a dozen different rural organisations, environmental groups, community groups and so on that are completely outraged, as are many of those organisations representing people who work and earn their living from forestry, that the Government and Coillte, the State forestry company that should be responsible for being the guardian of the people’s forest estate and enhancing the afforestation programme is, instead, facilitating profiteering by vulture funds from the UK in this case but potentially by all sorts of vulture funds.

This is so bad because it will exacerbate an already dysfunctional and failed forestry model. Gresham House and other equity funds do not care about biodiversity, farmers, rural communities, climate mitigation, soil or water quality; they care about making money. We will get more of these monocultural Sitka spruce plantations, which actually damage our environment, and adversely affect farmers and our aims to develop a sustainable afforestation programme. Will the Government agree to abandon this and to radically reform the mandate of Coillte in order that it starts to act in the interests of all of the people and stops facilitating the profit hunger of vulture and equity funds?

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