Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have been listening to this debate and I have to say to my colleague, Deputy Shanahan, that I think the reaction to this investment is hysterical and has not taken into account the genuine climate crisis that we are facing here. Our land use in forestry, instead of being a source of sequestration, is actually emitting 7 million tonnes, which is more than 10% of all of our emissions, and that is going to rise in the coming years to 11 million tonnes. It is very much part of our climate crisis and the challenge that we have in the forestry area.

Forestry needs investment because it has to stand the planting cost and people also have to stand without income for 30 years. The State cannot do this alone. We need to mobilise private investment to achieve that as it will not all come from farmers being able to fund it. The reality is that we are 90% off the current target. The investment that is proposed by Coillte here is less than 1% of the new planting that we envisage doing over the next 25 years. That is the reality. I have come in here time and again and listened to Opposition spokespeople lambasting the Government for not having a more effective planting strategy and wanting more, but when Coillte, a body which has national standards applied universally, decides to try to be innovative in this space, the Opposition and many other people jump down its throat.

The reality of this investment is that it is being supported by the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, a fund that we have set up with independent management to identify areas of investment where we need strategically, as a country, to leverage extra money into this, part of it State investment from ISIF, but part of it privately raised. The investor or the fund manager here is going to target Irish pension funds as one of the core investors in this. If we want to tackle the climate crisis and go from our lamentable performance in terms of both emissions reduction and planting, we need to be innovative. Coillte, far from being a monopoly, owns only half of all, but it is also completely debarred from any State subsidy, so, unlike private investors, it cannot attract moneys to support its activity.

The supposition that because there is a fund raising money, that this is undermining the future of farming is totally misplaced. As I have said, this is only 1% of our overall ambition and the reality is that we are not anything like achieving what we need to do. I am fully behind the Government’s approach of supporting farmers. Indeed, this approach ensures that the farmers, and those who are investing, invest in a mixed forest plantation, not conifers alone, and that it promotes with higher subsidies those who are more supportive of biodiversity. Indeed, the forestry strategy outlines a multiple of goals, seven different ones in fact, including climate biodiversity, but also forestry and getting wood products and displacing in our construction industry the excessive use of concrete. Scotland uses three times more wood than we do and we want to see that changed.

Forestry is a business and it needs to provide an adequate return both to family farms which invest in it and to anyone else who invests in it. That is the reality. If we want to support a more mixed approach, which we do, it is public policy which must drive that. That is what the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, has been doing in designing her strategy. It is designed to promote multiple approaches.

The other reason why Coillte’s activity is to be welcomed is that a reliable State investor like Coillte can ensure that the carbon sequestration standards are achieved by these forestry undertakings. This will be forestry managed to the highest possible standards and able to guarantee the type of carbon sequestration which will become a source of income to family farmers, and the sooner it becomes so, the better.

Finally, the farmers that I hear from are reluctant to invest in forestry because it means an immediate devaluation of their land and an obligation to replant at the end. They feel that they are locked into forestry for a lifetime. The arrival of new investors in the scheme will make the sector more liquid and people will be able to move in and out of it. That will create an environment where it is more attractive to farmers to make that investment on part of their farms.

I welcome, in particular, the approach of allowing small 1 ha investments in the strategy. Because this company which will be managing the fund is based in Britain, I believe that we have had something of a jingoistic reaction to what is happening here. This is a State enterprise which manages forestry to a high standard and which is completely compliant with all of the new approaches the Minister of State has articulated and is finding innovative ways to deliver in an area where we are totally off the targets we have set for ourselves. We need to look at this in a more balanced way than we have seen here in the House heretofore.

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