Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to have a conversation about this Bill. I compliment the Minister of State on her choice of face mask. I think it is very appropriate that it depicts native woodland.

This is important legislation. We all recognise the necessity to clear the backlog of applications for various different licences. I am taken to a large extent by the contact that has been made with me by timber mills, the construction sector and other operations that will require a supply of timber.There is deep concern among them that if we do not address this pipeline rapidly, there will be further pressure on our economic activity. I do not think anybody here needs me to go on any further about the implications for our economy as a result of the Covid pandemic.

While there is a need to ensure the supply of timber, we need to have a robust regime in place. I come from a county that has seen many serial objections to planning and forestry at every possible stage. There are people for whom it is almost a way of life. There is often an appropriate reaction to that but there is often an overreaction too. We have to be careful and balance our approach when we are dealing with what we see as serial objectors or nuisance objectors, we do not demonise every objector. There are legitimate and valid objections that need to be made.

As a former spokesman for my party in the other House, I was often, from a climate change perspective, taken by people's reactions when I talked about the necessity for more planting of trees. There were calls from Leitrim and Sligo, and from parts of my own constituency, where communities felt that there was an over-concentration of planting, especially of conifers, and that was having an impact on the soil, rivers and the general visual amenity of the area, with encroachment onto arable land that might be better served without that particular species. I have always had the view that we need a different approach to the growing of trees in this country. We need more native species and we need to see more land set aside for the growth of trees from a carbon capture perspective, without looking at the ultimate commercialisation relating to the production of timber at the end. We need to look at it purely as a resource that is a carbon sink. Hopefully the Minister of State will be able to advance that with her own views and ideas on this area. That is another sector that we can do much more in.

The purpose of this Bill in the first instance is to ensure that we address the crisis, which I support wholeheartedly. I support trying to reduce and limit the practice of what are often considered vexatious or serial objections, while at the same time ensuring that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is a legitimate necessity in some cases to object for a number of reasons. People are entitled to a certain visual amenity in an area. There are others who believe in the potential for a community to be maintained and developed and that certain plantations would impact on that. In the minds of some, certain rural areas were almost written off because of the desire of so many to move away from rural areas into the cities.

There is much to be learned from the current pandemic and we may not know what the outcome of that will be for a long time. There seems to be greater recognition that not everybody needs to live on top of each other in densely packed cities to have a meaningful work environment. The advances in technology that we have all embraced in recent weeks and months are a clear recognition that we do not need to sit in cars and public transport for hours each day. People can have the experience of living in more rural settings while at the same time participating actively in urban life, perhaps on a less frequent basis, but they would be able to hold down jobs in major urban centres while principally bringing their family up or living in a more rural setting. I look forward to the passage of this Bill but I do not think that it should signal an end to the process of afforestation and how we might manage it for the benefit not just of the people who own the land, but also the people who live in the area and, importantly, the climate generally.