Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is all about backing farmers. That forestry programme is the best that has been introduced in the State. It will really see a significant change. We have now moved out of the crisis situation and are now getting into an equilibrium. We are driving down that backlog. It is about driving that along and backing farmers to do it, while putting farmers at the centre.

Coillte also has a strong role to play. That agency used to do a lot of afforestation, but has not been doing it since 2004. Coillte's ten-year strategic plan outlines how it wants to contribute to that again by doing 100,000 ha of the 400,000 ha we plan to do nationally by 2050. Coillte was looking at options, which is within its semi-State commercial remit. It was looking at options for how it would get into doing that. It has explored an investment option as part of that. It has signed up to a five-year contract, which it is now contractually obliged to do. We have engaged with it on this because we want to look at how we can get Coillte to work. It is not our preferred option as to how this would happen, but it has signed up to a five-year contract, which is well within its remit. Operating as a commercial semi-State agency it is absolutely getting on with its job. We have sat down to see how we can enable Coillte to help it work with farmers and also how it can work more closely with the State around actually helping the agency get back into the afforestation space again, as it has been in the past. This is something we will explore with it further. Coillte has signed up to the five-year contract which, in its totality of 4,000 ha of new afforestation, would amount to 1% of our overall national target for new afforestation between now and 2050. It is a small part of our overall target, but we will need to enable Coillte to do it further. We are looking at how we can work with it so it can partner with farmers. We are also looking at how we can work with it on how the State can work more closely with it as well.

There has been the Sinn Féin motion this evening and we will have a really good engagement and discussion at the committee tomorrow, where there will be a lot more opportunity for over and back and discussion. That will be very good. Looking at the Sinn Féin motion it asks for three things. First of all it asks that the Gresham House deal would be done away with. That is contractually already signed up to and it is a five-year contract that Coillte has signed up to. We are looking at how we can enable Coillte to move forward from that to work closely with the State and more closely with farmers. That is the first part. The second part is that we publish our new forest strategy as soon as possible, and an ambitious one. This is what we will be doing. We are working on finalising that at the moment and it will be a really good forestry strategy to go with the unprecedented high premium rate that we already announced just before Christmas.

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