Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Seanad Éireann shall take note of the Report of the Joint Committee on Agriculture and the Marine entitled 'Issues impacting the Forestry Sector in Ireland', copies of which were laid before Seanad Éireann on 2nd March, 2021.

I welcome the Minister of State and Deputy Cahill to the House. As a Fianna Fáil member of the agricultural panel, I am glad that Deputy Cahill is only passing through here today. It is a House that I never want to see him in unless - and I say this genuinely as a good friend and colleague - he is back as Chair of the committee. I hope that some day in the future that will happen.

I welcome the Deputy and thank him for the lead he took on this report on what was identified, in the formation of the last Government, as an area of major crisis in our agriculture sector, its role in carbon sequestration and the whole climate action process. It has been a well-documented issue and this is not the first discussion we have had on forestry.

I am not going to go over old ground. I will stick specifically to the report before us. What else would I say as a member of the joint committee other than it is a fantastic report. However, a report is only as good as the paper it is written on. It is the implementation of the report that is the proof of the pudding at the end of the day, as they say.

I compliment Deputy Cahill on the fact that he added this issue to the work programme of the committee very early in the game, and on the amount of work that he personally put into the compilation of the report, along with the other committee members. While there are acknowledgments in the report of the witnesses who appeared before the committee, I am very much aware of numerous other meetings that were held - mainly online because of Covid - with other parties, stakeholders and people involved who are not even referenced in the report. I attended some of those meetings with Deputy Cahill. A large body of work was put into the compilation of the report.

With regard to the content of the report, as with any report, the recommendations, observations and conclusions on pages 13 and 14 are what is important. As I have stated, the report is only effective if and when the recommendations are implemented, implemented successfully and have the desired effect.

I welcome, since the publication of the report, the appointment of Ms Jo O'Hara to oversee the implementation of the Mackinnon report. As we all know, the Mackinnon report was a previous report commissioned on forestry which is referenced in this report on numerous occasions. It was felt by the committee that the Mackinnon report was doing the proverbial life-after-publication thing of sitting on a shelf. I welcome the appointment of Ms O'Hara to oversee the implementation of that report.

I compliment the Minister of State on bringing forward the legislation which alleviated some of the appeals issues that were adding to the backlog in the licensing system. The backlog in the licensing system is the issue that has been highlighted most in all discussions on forestry over the last few years. One of the recommendations of the report is that the licensing system is eased up going forward. There is a necessity that when people apply for a licence, they are given a timeframe as to when they will get a response, whether good, bad or indifferent.It is strongly recommended in the report that one licence should cover an entire cycle of forestry. I feel very strongly about this. Built into an afforestation licence should be a forestry management plan that includes roads and felling, which we know will happen at some stage in the life cycle of the forest. If this recommendation were implemented, there would be no need for three applications. That three licence applications must be made for one forest adds to the backlog.

Another major issue in the report is that of ash dieback. We recommend a quarterly report on the reconstitution and underplanting scheme, RUS, and how it is progressing. We believe the scheme needs to be examined. It is not effective and there needs to be more compensation for those who have lost their plantations through ash dieback.

Another recommendation, which I welcome, is to develop a species of ash that would be ash-dieback resistant. However, we must be very careful and ask when a native Irish ash becomes other than native if we modify its make-up. While we always have a big debate about native broadleaf trees, it is strongly recommended that we further the science on developing resistant ash. However, we have to be careful not to cross the threshold whereby a native ash would become something other than that.

On licensing, I accept that the dashboard we saw last week indicated an increase. This is welcome. However, if the indicated number issued per month is realised, we will still reach only 6,000 ha. Our target is 8,000. Therefore, we need a significant further increase.

The major requirement, which comes across very strongly in the report, is confidence in the forestry sector. People will not want to sow trees and forestry targets will not be met if we cannot come up, here and now, with some way of re-instilling confidence in the farming community, in particular.