Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That was well said by my colleague on the Committee on the Environment and Climate Action. I cannot speak about our forestry strategy without addressing the issue of Coillte and what my comrade Deputy Carthy raised here on Tuesday. It is not often that I am speechless but I was glad I had a couple of days before I got to speak on this issue. The proposal by Coillte to sell 12,000 hectares of land to Gresham House, which is a foreign private investment firm, is inexplicable, cheap and trashy. I believe the revulsion at this plan is widely felt across the House and that the outright rejection of this casino is gutteral for all of us who believe in the integrity of the land and the dignity of all who are proud to call Ireland our home.

This Government is already selling our housing to vultures and cuckoos and selling the care of our elderly to global corporate markets and here it goes again selling our forests to a foreign investor. Deputy Carthy read the response to a parliamentary question that stated the Government had issued a letter of shareholder execution to Coillte to include partnership or participatory enterprises on 2 June 2022, which was eight months ago, so the Government knew all along. It knew and it did nothing. It knew then and it knows now that this land and good forestry are essential to the future of our farmers, communities, climate plan, biodiversity and how we live on this island with the changes and demands the climate crisis is bringing. Instead of the message stad anseo, with the granting of the shareholder letter, the message was away libh. There is a shocking cheapness, ignorance and crassness to this deal that has no place in the heart of an Irish Government that fancies itself as mature and all grown up. Are you having a laugh? It has the mortifying feel of the gombeen man selling what is priceless for a few coloured beans. It is so brazen and cheap. It displays the old-fashioned, dangerous and damaging thinking that sees humans as separate from the land and nature as opposed to being part of it and regards the land and nature as being there for us to exploit and, in the case of Coillte and the Government, to exploit for private profit by a foreign investor.

In north Kildare, people were angry and sickened by this even before Deputy Carthy got to his feet with the revelation he put on the record of the Dáil on Tuesday night. I was already inundated with emails from constituents in north Kildare who were disgusted by this, many of whom told me they had voted for the Green Party. Pimping out our land and prostituting it to a foreign investor for its private profit was not only horrifying and nonsensical, it was also downright disrespectful and unpatriotic. These people know this is land we need for our small farmers, family farms and local communities because they know that good forestry, not the cheap, splintered industrial monoculture wasteland of Sitka spruce, is what we need. We need indigenous forests for our people, climate and biodiversity. They know that good forestry brings the community into its shelter and does not leave them living in its shadow.

We already bear the historical, societal and inherited psychological scars of the stripping of our ancient woodland by a foreign power. The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications would do well to grasp that this was the reason we had no wolves in the first place. Mac tíre - the son of the land - was lost to exploitation of our oak forests so the British empire could build its navy to exploit other lands and communities at the far end of the earth.

I heard the Minister's colleague on the radio last night saying this was no the repetition of the situation that inspired the song "Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad? Tá deireadh na gcoillte ar lár", but tell that to the hundreds of people who sent emails to us. This has really touched a nerve with the people and the Government needs to listen to them. I am getting emails from people in urban and rural areas who are united on this. For centuries, the stripping of our land will be done by a financial power. Coillte is gifting this land to Gresham as per the letter.

Well-being in forestry is essential and there will be no well-being if this cheapening of our land and people for the incentivisation of vast private profit pushes the price of land out of the reach of local farmers. It would be perverse if it did, and it will. It would not reflect the values people have and their concerns about how we live together with equality and the just transition for the future.

I call on the Minister to get on with publishing the new forestry strategy. I do not know if he attended the Save our Forests - Save our Land protest earlier. It wants investors out, nature in, and to have hedgerows, not hedge funds. The Government has to clear the remaining forestry licensing backlogs and continue to process new licence applications within a reasonable timeframe. The implementation of the Mackinnon report and subsequent reports must be central to future action.

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