Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the committee for all its work on this report and I thank the Minister of State for taking the time to attend this debate. We could talk about trees all day, and it is great that everybody now recognises the importance of trees. I remember planting trees about 25 years ago. We had recycled a load of aluminium cans. A fellow from Longford town, John Crossan, had a dream that one could turn cans into trees. He recycled 250,000 cans and bought 5,000 trees. We went all around Ireland planting trees with schoolchildren. It was an amazing experience. Now, 25 years later, it is a topic for the Seanad.

I commend the work of the Minister of State, Senator Hackett. There were many problems in the forestry section of the Department, and there still are, but the numbers do not lie. Níor bhris an dea-fhocal béal duine riamh. It is always good to point to wins when we have them. There is major investment in resources in the Department and there are more ecologists. I believe the Minister of State started out with two when she took office and now there are 27. That is very important work because we have to put the right tree in the right place and we must have ecologists in the Department doing the work. One can always pay somebody to say it is all good, but there must be neutral departmental ecologists who are going to do this correctly. I welcome that, as it very important. In the past we have seen too much Sitka spruce and not enough native woodland or perhaps native woodland that did not survive and was mismanaged. There have been many forestry issues, so it is important to make that point.

Licensing in 2021 was 56% higher than in 2020, with 4,050 licences issued in 2021 compared with 2,592 issued in 2020. That is a huge achievement considering the backlog and the bureaucracy. One could say I am biased because I am in the same political party, but I know the Minister of State is working night and day on this. We must acknowledge progress when there is progress because that encourages more progress. The civil servants with the Minister of State have also worked hard on this and we should acknowledge that work. Things are improving. It started badly but we see progress in that realm.

It is also important that we look at forestry as an industry. There is a myth that all Sitka spruce is bad and that if somebody is planting Sitka spruce and not native woodland it means the person does not care. There is also the huge industry of housing construction and the materials needed for housing. Now, more than ever, timber-framed housing is being considered as a much better model than the concrete blocks of old. Even bricklayers are saying that their time is running out because we are going to be looking towards more timber-framed houses. That is why it is great that we plant Sitka spruce and it is managed properly so it becomes the wood we need to build the houses and therefore bring down the price of housing and the price of materials. It is important to say that. It is much more nuanced than saying all Sitka spruce is evil and all native woodland is good. Let us be realistic and have an intelligent debate about it, because sometimes we get lost in over-simplifying the debate on forestry.

However, I must say that native woodlands are just the best thing on the planet. They are so important. They are good for our mental health and physical health, even if we did not have-----