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

Pretty much every farmers' organisation, every organisation that represents communities in rural Ireland and every environmental organisation I can think of are utterly opposed to this deal. They say, rightly, that it is likely to drive up the price of agricultural land, squeezing out farmers and making it more difficult for them to engage in sustainable afforestation.

As I said, it will exacerbate an already utterly failed and dysfunctional model that has been pursued by Coillte, with the consequence that the vast majority of our public forest estates are dead zones of Sitka single species monocultural plantations that do nothing for biodiversity. Some reports have said they are actually carbon emitters because the trees are cut down too young. We need the State forestry company to stop facilitating the profit hunger of even more people by bringing in these funds and to instead support farmers, local communities, environmentalists and so on in developing a sustainable forestry model that will advance afforestation in a way that is good for climate, farmers and communities. This is not it. It is a corporate heist being facilitated with public money and by the State forestry company.

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