Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like others, I welcome the Minister of State and this particular legislation. As we now know, this provides for the statutory prohibition of fur farming and will impact on the three active farms in the State. It is important to point out they were acting lawfully but the legislation is to compensate them as they are about to lose their businesses and certain people will lose their jobs.The Bill governs the nature of the compensation scheme that can be provided to ensure that mink farming operators are to be compensated for their losses and costs directly resulting from the prohibition on fur farming in Ireland. The Bill sets out the criteria on which compensation for income loss, non-income loss and certain costs that will be payable, and the type, of costs that will be covered by the compensation scheme under the legislation, will include redundancy payments to the employees, which is important, certain professional fees, mink disposal and clean-up costs and the costs involved in the demolition of mink buildings. There are only three mink farms in the country and it is only right that they would be compensated.

I welcome what is happening in the Bill on forestry. I have been a strong advocate of urging people to plant trees and make things as easy as we can for them. I acknowledge, as have many others, that we have issues with forestry. Hopefully we will get through that and we can encourage more planting of native species. I am sure the Minister of State realises that there is a market for some of the pines that are growing now. It is the only thing that will grow on certain types of land. While we do not want them all over the place, there is a market there. They are important to sawmills and for exporting. While we do have to encourage more native trees, and that is what I want, we do have to keep that in mind.

I will raise a hobby horse of mine. I wonder can it be brought in under the legislation. It relates to the planting of fruit trees. Going back generations, nearly every homestead in this country had an orchard. There could be ten, 12, 15 or maybe 20 trees. Imagine encouraging that and what it would do for our carbon count. Moreover, I was presented with figures recently which I am getting checked out. Someone in the business told me that we are actually spending €80 million on importing apples into this country when we have one of the greatest climates for growing apples in the world. Much of that comes in from France. I know that we have shortages when our own crop runs out and we have to import but imagine the double benefit of covering small tree plantations and allowing it to be included in the carbon count. That is something that should be encouraged because, going back to many of the small and medium farm outlets, there was that orchard. I robbed some of the orchards myself, to be honest. I put my hand up; lámha suas. It really should be followed up. I think that farmers would engage in that. It is another method of getting the carbon count right and it would be doubly productive because we would have all these apples produced and sold in local markets. It is worth doing some research on this issue. I would be really delighted if the Minister of State could look that up and see if we can include it somewhere in the legislation and move forward with it.