Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This Friday at 1 p.m., the Save Our Forests Save Our Lands alliance will hold a protest outside the headquarters of Coillte in Newtownmountkennedy precisely to address what more than 30 different environmental and rural organisations that have joined the alliance believe is the risk posed to biodiversity, to farmers, to local communities, to water quality, to sustainable forestry and to addressing our climate objectives by the policies of Coillte. Coillte has most recently attempted to pursue a forestry model that is about involving vulture funds, which are purely interested in making profit from forestry and continuing the failed bankrupt model of monoculture Sitka spruce, which is damaging for the environment, damaging for local communities and worse than useless for biodiversity, water quality, soil quality - you name it. There needs to be a fundamental reform of Coillte and what it is doing because, at the moment, it is pursuing a damaging forest model on every level.

The Gresham House deal should still, even now, be unravelled but, more importantly, we need a fundamental reform of the mandate of Coillte so it is not about competing with farmers and not about operating forest simply for profit, but is actually about being the guardian of the forest estate in the interests of the common good and in the interests of pursuing biodiversity and supporting farmers and local communities. I hope the Taoiseach will support that protest and its demands for a fundamental and urgent reform of the Coillte mandate.

See this speech in context