Results 8,641-8,660 of 26,897 for speaker:Richard Boyd Barrett

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: The decisions being made by the Department, not the appeals, are way down.

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Decisions issued by the Department on felling up to the end of August were way down, from nearly 3,500 at the end of August last year to just 1,040 this year. The issue of the supply of timber to sawmills lies at the door of the Department, not the environmental blackguards or the appeals committee.

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: If the Deputies can provide me with alternative statistics, I invite them to do so. I listened very carefully to everything they have said. If they have statistics that challenge those I provided on the appeals percentages, I would be happy to hear them. I am an open minded person and I listen.

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: What is wrong with hugging trees? Deputy Mattie McGrath might do it to calm himself down occasionally. This suggests that the problem lies with the Department, not with blackguards or the appeals process in particular. If these facts-----

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: What is Deputy McGrath's source, other than references to blackguards? There are lots of blackguards out there, unnamed.

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Let us try to find agreement here. Would empirical evidence be useful in this debate? I think it would be quite useful. Maybe the Minister or Minister of State can provide us with some empirical evidence about the extent of the appeals against afforestation and felling licences. We need numbers on this. Is the problem being referred to by the Deputies here - and obviously there is a...

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Let us find out. That is the Deputy's opinion but we need facts. Let us have evidence-based decision making.

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I listened very well.

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: The Minister of State should provide empirical evidence to back up her arguments. It would be short-sighted, without that evidence, to in any way short-circuit, limit or narrow the basis upon which people can, for good reason, object to or appeal licence decisions. According to my source, the Department's ability to make decisions has dropped off because it was found that the method of...

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: A deadline would be reasonable if the resources were made available and if the Department could guarantee that there was full compliance. If we just ram a decision through in an arbitrary eight weeks and are not in compliance, we will be in court the day after anyway because somebody will take us to court for having breached the directives. What we need is for the Department to put...

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: One of the benefits of democracy, when it works at all which is not that often, is that one learns things. Even better, people are watching and are hearing the debate, which I am certainly learning from. They then bring to bear facts that impact on the debate we have heard. I have received one communication that is very interesting in that regard. It challenges very strongly the rationale...

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Let us have a guess. Seeing as all these blackguards are out there causing uproar, somebody must have a rough idea of the percentage of afforestation licences were appealed. The answer is 1.1%.

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: What?

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I find myself, strangely, in agreement with Deputy Fitzmaurice, or perhaps it is not so strange. We should not be debating this Bill. We certainly should not be rushing it through in this way. I have learned a lot from the Deputies Danny and Michael Healy-Rae, Mattie McGrath and others. I genuinely bow to their knowledge and experience of certain situations, the views of farmers and all...

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Mary Byrne.

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: The logic pursued by the supporters of the Bill is rush, rush, rush. It is a dangerous rush and it is one that may well lead to people cutting off their nose to spite their face. I fully understand the anxiety, concern and pressure among small farmers who invested in forestry and who feel the need to gain a return on that investment. They should certainly be supported, as should people who...

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Friedrich Engels's life partner was a woman from rural Ireland called Lizzie Burns. He stated: Let us not [...] flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different,...

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020 [Seanad]: Second Stage (Resumed) (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: As I stated, in Wallonia it is worth €4.5 billion. We are massively underperforming in terms of the employment and revenue we could generate if we had a good and sustainable forestry model instead of the monocultural industrial forestry model that may result in net deforestation. As the model is largely based on one species of tree, it is quite damaging to soil and water. As it...

Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020 [Seanad]: Second Stage (Resumed) (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: We will be opposing this Bill for a number of reasons. First, the manner in which this Bill is being pushed through is a disgrace. Even at this point, we are scrambling around and trying to get our heads around huge numbers of amendments, which will never be debated and discussed in any event. All of those amendments have been collapsed into the Second Stage debate and the legislation will...

Saincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Debate: Covid-19 Pandemic Supports (30 Sep 2020)

Richard Boyd Barrett: The Government's policy is to rely on the goodwill of the banks to be humane towards borrowers in financial difficulty. That is pathetic. To call it naive would be a gross understatement. Remember what these banks did to borrowers who got in trouble as a result of the financial crash. They harassed and harangued them and put them through the wringer. People tried to engage with the...