Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The proposal to allow Coillte to use an investment company to buy up land and plant vast quantities of farmland across the country is another surge to the right, which is where this Government is going. We have a whole lot of issues in farming across the country. We have serious problems in our sheep and suckler cow sectors. I do not see any investment funds coming in to save them. Yet, one of the only parts of agriculture where we have investment funds is the part that is tax free and highly subsidised by the State, which is forestry.

We are creating a situation where multinational corporations and investors will make vast profits on the back of taxpayers’ money. That is what this is really about. It has very little to do with our targets or ensuring we have met climate action targets or, indeed, afforestation targets to produce timber. It is about creating a system in which the Government can move public money into the hands of private investors. It is absolutely scandalous that this Government would consider that an appropriate thing to do.

In the part of the country where I come from, we have very large areas of forestry. In County Leitrim, we have probably surpassed 20% of the available land that people are using. We cannot compete and nor can farmers. At the moment, when they want to buy a piece of land beside them, they find that forestry companies come in and buy that land. Now, we have a situation where Coillte, a State-funded agency, is going to do same thing, backed by a foreign investment company from England called Gresham House. It is preposterous that the Government would consider that this is appropriate.

I cannot for the life of me understand how the Minister of State met representatives from Coillte last week and came out of that meeting saying she was going to encourage and help them in this project. Where is the sense in this? Has the Minister of State no idea where the vast majority of people rest on this issue? I have spoken to farmers and people in the forestry industry. In fact, I heard Ms Marina Conway from the Western Forestry Co-op on the radio last week talking about this very issue. Everybody who is involved in the industry is against it and yet the Government is continuing to go down this road. It simply strikes me that it is not really about forestry or climate change objectives. It is about corporate profits. I do not know who is pulling the strings and where but whoever is doing it, those strings need to be cut. If there is any courage left in this Government, it's Members need to stand up for the ordinary people and ensure that if taxpayers' money is going to be used for the benefit of anyone, it is for the benefit of the people of this country.

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