Results 8,581-8,600 of 26,843 for speaker:Richard Boyd Barrett
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: He was having a pop. That is what he was doing. For the information of Deputy Mattie McGrath, the decline in output in the processing of applications by the Government dwarfs the figure he mentioned. It is a decrease of 2,000.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: The Deputy wants to know why there is currently a backlog in the industry. It is not the few hundred appeals he referred to, although I do not deny that is an issue; it is the decrease of 2,000 in the processing of applications, most of which would not have been appealed. They would have gone through but they are not being processed, and that is the problem.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: What percentage of felling licences were appealed? It was 2.77%. In 2020, just over 1% of afforestation licences were appealed and 75% of felling licences were not appealed. There was a jump in the number of appeals in 2020 but it is still considerably less than one would be led to believe from the argument that there is a massive load of blackguards out there, clogging up the system. ...
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: We have been hearing a lot of rhetoric about blackguards, presumably environmental blackguards.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: I must be getting somewhere-----
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: I must be touching a nerve now; that is all I can say. I must be touching a nerve.
- 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...