Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Fáilte isteach, a Aire, agus failte ar ais ó COP26. I found a beautiful poem to remind us about the importance of trees. I will read a few lines from it.A lovely bard and wandering minstrel in Clare made this known to me many moons ago.

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

That is by the great poet Joyce Kilmer. It brought to mind interesting lines from the Pope. I met the Bishop of Ferns last week. We were talking about the fact that even the Pope is now asking bishops to tell their priests to give sermons on the importance of taking care of our forests and nature. Trees play such an important part in that. For all the lower plants, the trees provide shelter and foliage. They say that the carbon sink of a mature beech tree is the same as the carbon sink of an acre of land. We really have to look at trees in a whole new way. In the past, it was all about getting trees out of the way for developing land and industry. Hundreds of years ago we were covered in oak trees. Apparently, Fionn mac Cumhaill went from one end of Ireland to the other without putting his foot on the ground. Now, we have the lowest forestry rates in Europe. However, we have one of the best hedgerow systems. It is important to recognise the part that trees play in our hedgerow systems, such as blackthorn and ash. We have to be mindful of the hedgerows for that reason.

In the not even a year and a half since the Minister of State, Deputy Hackett, has been in Government she has played a blinder. She was handed a poisoned chalice with a huge backlog of licensing. It is easy to blame the current Minister, but the Minister of State has focused on being positive. She has put a lot of energy into trying to resolve the issue as opposed to blaming other people. There has been good progress made. As she has outlined, there have been many more licences distributed this year. More will come at the end of the year. Everything takes time. I am sure she would have given out 10,000 licences if she could have done so. It is not as if there is not a big want and desire there. I want to acknowledge that.

There is important work to be done around forestry in making sure we have the right trees in the right place. We should not say that all sitka spruce is evil and that if it is not native woodland it is bad. That kind of narrative is creeping in as well. There has perhaps been an over-extension of lands taken over completely by sitka spruce in the past, which has caused this issue. However, we are far more intelligent. We should be able to have a nuanced debate about forestry instead of polarising sitka versus native woodland. That does not serve anybody. As the Minister of State outlined we need sitka spruce and softwoods to help build the country as well. It is important that we have a proper debate about forestry and that we do not polarise. We have seen what polarisation does. It does not resolve any issues, it just drives a wedge. We have to come together as a country and as a Government to try to resolve these issues.

Lots of good work has be done by a number of farmers. They have stopped clearing their hedges. There was a big movement to make all their fields as big as possible. I see that now is waning, which is a good thing. There is a new appreciation for hedgerows. If one calls to farmers, they will say that they do not hear the birds they used to hear. They have seen what can happen within a few years. If we put trees back again, it will change everything in the land. It will give shelter to the animals and it will increase the different types of birds again. There is such a richness around trees. I used to go to some of the green schools. If I asked a child to tell me something about trees, they would give 50 reasons trees are amazing, from the desks they are sitting at, to the nuts that they eat, to the things that trees have been used to build, to the paper they write on, and so many other things. Trees have to be greatly valued.Under old Brehon law, if someone chopped a tree, they were fined a cow, but if they chopped an oak tree or a hardwood tree, they were fined a cow in calf. That is nostalgia but, at the same time, there was a real value for trees, and we need to bring that back again. We have to focus on getting the right tree in the right place and there is some work to be done around that. I have a couple of acres of Sitka spruce and I am still trying to figure out the best way to deal with that. I have used some of it already, making some really rough furniture, and I have burned some in my wood stove as well. We are going to have to be very clever in how we use trees. If forests are managed properly, we can produce good timber - if it is the right tree, if the forest is maintained properly and if we grow native woodlands.

During Covid, we all got reconnected through finding a nice forest anywhere we could near us. It is good for our mental health and our physical health to walk among the trees. It is so important that we get this issue right. I am very glad we have someone like the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, in this place, facing this challenge, because I know she is deeply concerned and is coming from the best place possible to try to rectify the situation.

It was good to attend the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine yesterday. I was listening to some of the plans around eco-agri schemes which will see trees planted on every farm in Ireland, which is very important. I did a module in tree science many moons ago in Drumcolliher. One of the things that really struck me was that a tree, say, a willow tree, is like a column of water, so trees have such an important part to play in that they can stop soil erosion and assist in drainage. We have underestimated the value of trees but that is changing and, in some ways, the lockdowns reconnected people with the importance of trees.

I was at a Sharon Shannon gig last week. The Bishop of Ferns was also there. We had such a beautiful chat about the importance of trees. We are going to work together on bringing that to the people who attend church on Sundays, which many people do in Ireland. It shows how it has come into the middle of Ireland and how it has become so important. It is not just the tree huggers and the sandal wearers anymore because it is too big and too important an issue. The farmers want to harvest the trees and everybody is coming from the right place. We need to focus on not causing polarisation and focus on getting the job done. It does not help to be tearing strips off each other and we do not have time for that anymore.

We will have to look for extra supports for the nurseries because there is going to be a huge demand to plant trees. The Minister of State might outline if there will be more supports for tree nurseries. I know from doing tree seed saving myself that it can take a couple years to even get a sapling established. Of course, I could cut a slip of willow and stick it in the ground, which is a great one, and I have done that as well. It is very important that we have the right tree in the right place. I look forward to hearing more about the future strategy and how we plan to increase the coverage. Well done so far on trying to deal with the backlog in licensing and some progress has been made, although there is plenty more left to do. I thank the Minister of State for her work to date and look forward to hearing her response.