Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

At today's Business Committee, it was agreed that the Labour Party would give time to the Independent Deputy MacSharry, who has just arrived. I believe I have seven minutes.

The Minister and Minister of State are present.

We have seen, with the demonstration today and with the reaction from the public up and down this country to the proposed Gresham House deal, how strongly people feel about their woodlands, their ancient woodlands, which have been under pressure and under stress after centuries of mismanagement, and the woodlands that are yet to be.

The previous Deputy spoke about the importance of woodlands all over the country. I look at the Swords Woodland Association, which is a proactive group in my home town of Swords and which over the past five years has been in schools educating young people about the importance of woodlands and trees. They have had multiple plantings of trees all around the town. They have initiatives on the importance of hedgerows in biodiversity. It is a positive proactive association of which I am proud to be an ambassador, although the real work is driven by a fantastic group, including Councillor Joe Newman and Mr. Edward Stevenson, who are bringing the importance of woodlands to communities in urban settings.

People understand and connect with the importance of publicly-owned woodland space for our climate change objectives, for our biodiversity and for peaceful places to be and when this proposed Gresham House deal came to public consciousness, we were not surprised at the reaction that we have seen.

The Minister said Coillte wrote to him on 16 December to inform him that the deal with Gresham House had been signed off and that due to the Christmas break, he was unable to turn his attention to it until January. We also know the Minister has been aware that Coillte was looking to engage private investment since the end of 2021. To be fair to the Minister, he has not shied away from this.

The nature of this deal did not sneak up on the Minister or, indeed, on the Government on 16 December. There was no sleepwalking into this. This was something that was coming down the tracks for more than a year. We have heard from the managing director of Coillte that the Minister had been kept in the loop on this deal in the months leading up to it being signed off. The Minister knew this was in the pipeline and dropped the ball on doing anything to stop it.

The Minister admitted that this is not the preferred way to go but that begs the question as to what is Fianna Fáil's preferred route on this. The Government has had two years to look at better alternatives, which to most of us in the House are obvious. However, as a result of inaction, we are left with an outrageous deal that, by the Minister's own calculations, is less than preferable.

Perhaps it is the Fine Gael influence that has rubbed off on the Minister. This deal has their fingerprints all over it and I am sure they are delighted to finally be getting their wish of privatising forestry after they were blocked from doing so by the former Minister, Mr. Pat Rabbitte, and the Labour Party on their last attempt almost a decade ago. We have the scars on our back and know exactly how Fine Gael feels about forestry in this country and where it wants to go. It was hoped that the Green Party and Fianna Fáil would be able to stop such a way forward but this deal has all the hallmarks of what Fine Gael has wanted to do since its NewERA document many years ago.

The EU state aid regulations have prevented Coillte from receiving State grants and premia. In what world is the solution to this to simply hand the money over to a small number of investors syphoning funds from the public purse into the pockets of investment fund managers based outside the State? In the two years they have been aware that this was the course Coillte was looking to take, has the Minister not been petitioning the EU to change its rules around State grants?

In response to a question on Leaders' Question from my party leader, Deputy Bacik, today, the Green Party leader and Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, said that they will go to Europe for the change, but why is it taking so long? Why have they not gone to Europe already? Why is it in the future? If it is in the future, when exactly will the Minister go to make these changes?

The case to make is clear. There is a direct correlation between when those rules were introduced in 2003 and a decline of our forest sector. The Government knows that these rules have hampered Coillte's ability to carry out its mandate and we have heard from the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, among others, that the State should go to the EU to seek a change in these rules.

We heard from the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, earlier this week that the Government has still not approached Brussels. This backs up what the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, said in response to a question on Leaders' Questions today. When the Minister of State learned of Coillte's plans two years ago, her first port of call should have been to look for a change in these rules. This still has not occurred.

We accept that a new approach to forestry needs to be taken if we are to meet our targets but privatisation through the back door is not the solution. Coillte has claimed that it cannot meet the scale of investment required but the fact remains that it is an extremely profitable enterprise and has the capacity to borrow. It has more than €1 billion in net assets. Its 2019 balance sheet showed €58 million in profits and its 2021 balance sheet showed €119 million in profits. These two profit figures alone would show that to meet the amounting of funding of €200 million that this deal is looking at raising, Coillte would have the ability to service and repay a loan of that amount if the rules allowed, and it would prevent taxpayers' money being syphoned off into a foreign financial house through State grants and premia.

A syphoning off of State funds is exactly what we are seeing here. Coillte is getting into bed with private investment funds, the sole purpose of which are to generate profits for their investors. What this means in practice is that grants that could have been used by local farmers to develop their own forests on their own land are going to foreign investment fund managers and profits from the afforestation industry that could have been kept in local communities are being exported.

The commercial motivation of Gresham House will mean this deal results in as little regard for biodiversity and climate concerns as they can get away with. All the great work that organisations are doing locally, such as the Swords Woodland Association, can only do so much. We need Coillte to be resourced. We need the rules to be in place to ensure it can meet and, indeed, "smash" - the word the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, used today - through the targets. Unfortunately, this Government is not going in this direction and we have great fears about the future of afforestation industry.

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