Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The people of Ireland are paying a high price for this conglomeration of a Government. I blame Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for taking the Green Party on board and doing this to the people of Ireland. It is all right for them to say they know nothing about it. We know the Minister of State knew about this as far back as March 2021. She knew about Coillte plans to use such a private vehicle to acquire lands. That is why the Government is not granting licences for anything and confidence in the forestry sector is lower than it ever was before.

The Minister presided over the fishing debacle that will wipe out coastal communities and now confidence in farming is going out the window because farmers are being told they must buy more land to have the same amount of stock. How can they buy it now that they are competing with London? The Government is handing profits, money and land over to London after people fighting for 800 years to own land here. What has the Government done? It has let them in again, helped them with state aid and EU grants and told them to come back over to Ireland. Farmers will not be able to increase their holdings.

I remember the poor Coillte workers coming to work at 8 o'clock in the morning. I was there with them and I saw that when they were five minutes late they had to stand back until 9 o'clock. They worked hard and put Coillte in the picture. They did a pile of work but the Government has ensured that confidence in forestry is at its lowest ebb.

As Deputy Michael Healy-Rae stated, you would have to go back 60 or 70 years to find Ministers worse than those we have now. This is shameful. The Ministers are saying they did not know about it. Just like the finance Ministers knew about the plan to makes banks cashless in the summer, the agriculture and forestry Ministers knew about this deal They cannot deny that. They were involved in it and they did not care about granting of licences to anyone in any part of forestry.

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