Pippa Hackett (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Carthy wrote today in the Daily Mailthat this fund could receive up to €2 billion in subsidies from Irish taxpayers. This is utterly untrue. Deputy Carthy and his party know that this particular deal represents less than 1% of the Government’s targets for new forests by 2050. Sinn Féin knows that the vast majority of the €1.3 billion forestry programme will go to farmers. Sinn Féin also knows that the Government does not interfere in contracts made by commercial semi-States such as Coillte and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, nor should we be moving to a space whereby Ministers, or indeed Opposition politicians, can retrospectively interfere in contracts that semi-States have lawfully entered into.

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