Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion. I thank Deputy Carthy and Sinn Féin for tabling it. I wish it was the Government that was giving us the opportunity to speak on this matter in a proactive manner. Words fails me when I try to describe how important climate change and forestry are. If this is such a wonderful deal, one would imagine the Government would have brought it before the House and pointed to its advantages. Instead, we are reliant on press releases. There was a joint press release from the IFA, the Western Forestry Co-Op and so on, which joined forces to say not to go ahead with this. We eventually got a questions and answers document from Coillte to tell us it is not selling off Coillte land. That suggestion was allowed to fester for a while and then we were told it is not selling off that land but the firm does intend to buy up to 12,000 ha as a start.

In case we are in any doubt about that, let us look to what Gresham House has told us. It stated it had established "an Irish fund for ... attracting a key Irish investor base to underpin growth and access to the Irish forestry market". Company records show that a firm called the Gresham House Forestry General Partnership (Ireland) Limited was established in April of last year. It is interesting and significant that the company has also joined the Irish Association of Investment Managers, a lobbying vehicle, which, I understand, is headed up by a former Fine Gael Minister.

That is a little bit of the background on this. Tonight, I desperately want to work with the Green Party because climate change is an existential threat. We absolutely must have climate change considerations apply to everything because everything is interlinked. Were the Minister and Minister of State aware of Coillte’s plans at the time the motion states they were? Could they confirm that? If they were aware, how were they made aware? It has already been mentioned that one cannot see the forest for the trees in the way they are progressing. It is ironic that after colonisation led to the deforestation of Ireland over 400 years ago, after which we had very few trees left, it took almost 200 years to increase the proportion from 1% to 11%, and we are now relying on our former colonisers to reforest our country, for profit and with the help of the Irish Government and public money. I am referring to afforestation for profit and the setting up of all the difficulties. I am out of time so I will stop.

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