Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I come from County Wicklow, which has been at the heart of forestry.It has been a huge and integral part of our economy, but more than that, generations of families have earned their living from forestry for decades.

This legislation cannot come quickly enough. The forestry industry is in crisis. The Minister of State was in Shillelagh last week, in the None-So-Hardy nurseries, and she saw the work they are doing there. It was devastating to see on RTÉ the other night a whole refrigerated unit full of two-year-old oak trees that were going to be destroyed because we are not replanting. The reason we are not replanting is that we are not felling.

Something is equally wrong with the system when we go from 14 appeals to more than 400. Something is not working when that happens, or when we go from 1% or 2% of cases being appealed to 100%. That system is not working either.

I mentioned None-So-Hardy nursery, but we also have a huge sawmill in Woodfab Timber in Aughrim. We have a huge industry in the processing sector in Wicklow. Wicklow takes trees from growth all the way to building homes here in Dublin as well as in Wicklow itself. Wicklow will take a sapling and deliver a roof truss to somebody's house. Everybody here in Dublin probably has a piece of garden furniture that was manufactured in Woodfab in Aughrim. We are talking about bringing that industry to a close before Christmas. This crisis has been ignored and I am only too delighted to see that this is being put on an emergency footing because that is what is needed to save these jobs. We are talking about 12,000 jobs nationally, but forestry is also an integral part of our society in Wicklow.

I welcome the splitting of the commission. We need to start getting through the workload that is presented to us to resolve the appeals process.

Much has been made of the clause relating to relevant persons and there were mixed views on it. One minute I was happy that it was gone and the next I was thinking that maybe we should have left it in. It is an issue in Ireland depending on whether we are talking about licence appeals or planning appeals. Should we deal with the issue of relevant persons or ignore it? If we could confine it to relevant persons who are directly affected by either planning permission or a felling licence, the system might work better than what is happening at the moment, where 100% of our forestry licences are being appealed by certain individuals who control the system. The Minister of State has taken that part out of the Bill. I welcome that in one way, but looking at the list of people who qualified to appeal in the draft Bill, not too many were left out of it. I am not too sure about that issue.

As regards the fees, from what I am hearing I understand they will be along the lines of the planning system, with a charge of €20 for an observation and €200 for an appeal. That is not too onerous for people who are genuinely concerned about forestry, felling licences and reforestation and who have genuine concerns about matters that affect them directly.

I also welcome the ecologists being employed by the Department to try to deal with this matter. Perhaps the Minister of State can confirm that has happened. There were only one or two ecologists trying to deal with all these felling licences and I think that number has been significantly improved in recent months. That too will help the whole process. I am not against anybody appealing a decision or making an observation. People's livelihoods are at risk here. People are abusing the system as it stands at the moment and this directly affects the lives of people in my county. I welcome this legislation.

Wicklow has the second-highest rate of density of forestation in the country, with 17.9% of its landmass, or 36,000 ha, made up of forestry. We have lived with that all our lives. I hear about the monoculture and I can understand why that is a problem, but in Wicklow we have started to address it and are seeing diversification of planting. The Minister of State would have seen that in None-So-Hardy nursery in Shillelagh in Wicklow. It was devastating to see on the news the other night the number of oak saplings that will be destroyed because we have nowhere to plant them due to this crisis. I welcome this emergency legislation.