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

Part of the reason for the outrage at the Gresham House-Coillte deal was that it was going to further expand a failed forestry model of sitka plantations. They are bad for communities, bad for biodiversity, bad for water quality, and bad on just about every level. They make our forestry very vulnerable to disease and dependent on a monoculture economy. Interestingly, the European Commission letter, which we leaked and which the Government tried to suppress, essentially corroborated that critique. It said that reliance on the sitka plantation monoculture model was not acceptable to it because it was very damaging to biodiversity. All of this speaks to the need to radically reform the forestry model in this country away from the sitka plantation model and away from vulture funds. It speaks to the urgent need to reform the mandate of Coillte so that it diversifies forestry and develops a forestry model that is strong on biodiversity, helps communities and helps farmers to make a just transition, and develops a diverse forestry model that is less vulnerable to disease and to the ups and downs and dependence on a single monoculture model.

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