Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is what it says. Unless it is a certain size, there are certain trees that can be planted, and, just to be clear, there is also the description of a "native tree area". That is still a forest under the EU definition of "forest". The Forestry Act is also very clear that a threshold of anything under 0.5 ha can still be a forest. The EU forestry strategy is clear that is a forest. We will come to some of the amendments in respect of size later in more detail. However, half an acre of trees in the wrong place, which is environmentally sensitive or that creates problems, even if they are trees we support and want, can create issues and be in breach of these screening mechanisms. I will come to later amendments in which I will suggest where the Minister of State could remove some parts of section 22 but the parts on screening just cannot be removed.

I will also note section 1(2)(d) which refers to the "system established to provide visibility and [the] tracking of the exempted areas ... to ensure compliance with the ... Access to Information, Public Participation ... and Access to Justice ...". The public have two important rights under EU law, that is, environmental information and consultation. At the moment, this legislation removes certain kinds of planting from those mechanisms with simply a promise that there may be ministerial regulations that may address them. It does not address those issues, however. People are entitled to know exactly what is being planted and where. That environmental information can be really important in terms of rivers, archaeology, heritage and species. It is also important even for a nearby organic farmer in terms of what the impacts might be because plants relate to each other.

It is important that people have access to a consultation and, again, by taking this approach to move some of these area outside the normal forestry licencing plan, the Minister of State is cutting across people's rights under the Aarhus Convention in terms of consultation on these decisions and these kinds of planting. That is again a very serious concern.

I want to go a little wider than that and I say this because I really want to see it. I wish the past two years had been used not to evade but to improve. If we try to take shortcuts, it will take us longer. That is what we have seen again and again. We saw it with forestry when attempting to take shortcuts on forestry licencing created the dynamic whereby many appeals had to be taken and many were won because the right things were not applied originally.

Similarly, a former Minister sat in the Minister of State's place with a heritage brief in one of the first and longest debates we ever had in these Houses during the previous Seanad, which was on the heritage Bill. That Bill, again, wanted to speed up and make it easier to do certain kinds of cutting and try to widen the period of time. By doing that and doing it wrong, we were left with something that did not work and that could not be applied.

When the Minister of State is speaking to colleagues or when Ireland is trying to, for example, get recognition for the carbon sequestration of our forestry, plant these native trees we all want to get planted and have them included and ensure that people get credits and funding for them, and, again, I specifically support the idea of grants and supports in this area, they are going to find that because there is not proper environmental legislation, tracking or licencing, it will be very hard to have a proper measurement that will stand up in terms of people being able to access European supports, funds and, down the line, carbon credits in that respect.

The point we made on hedgerows was that they moved away from where people had to contact local councils and notify them that X, Y or Z was happening. If, for example, a hedge was being grubbed or removed, permission would have to have been sought. When it was left to a discretionary measure, however, it meant that when Ireland said we have X, Y or Z number of hedgerows, it could not stand over it because it was not being monitored in the same way. There is no tracking of it. We are creating a hostage to fortune in that regard for those who want to have this as an area in the future. We will come to this but I will point out that one of the caveats here is that for some of the measures, there is not a protection against this being commercial. There is not a protection against this being, for example, for crops. I will come to that in a later amendment but those are serious concerns.

I mentioned hedgerows. This is one of the really important parts of this amendment and why I hope that if the Minister of State will not accept it, she will table her own amendment to make sure all of this is in legislation and not in statutory regulations that may come later.

I refer to the issues of biodiversity. What we do not want and what is not protected against in these proposals is a situation where we have biodiverse scrub, hedgerows and plants already there, which are, in fact, sequestering carbon. We know some of the most damaging points in carbon emissions release are at the points where, for example, there is mass grubbing, clearing of land or clear-felling.We do not want a situation whereby we are effectively having emissions created in order that people can access grants to plant native trees and because we do not have the proper biodiversity measures in that regard, we are again creating a jeopardy and Ireland will not be able to guarantee that is not what has happened. That is not what we want to happen or what will happen. In fact, in many cases, planting can be done in a way that combines other planting and other biodiversity that is there. We should aim for a biodiverse, ecologically rich forestry, which people then get rewarded for planting, supporting and caring for but, again, the measures are not there in respect of biodiversity protection and ensuring that an inadvertent consequence or perverse incentive is not created.

This is a very lengthy amendment because I am trying to insert four provisions in the Bill that are not in it but need to be for it to be fit for purpose. I hope the Minister of State might accept this amendment and make it so that these measures would take place before section 9 would be commenced. However, I will also ask her to place these measures in the Bill itself. If she is proceeding in this area, we need primary legislation. We cannot have slippage from where Ireland already has a very poor reputation and credibility that will go against us at European level in terms of the implementation of environmental criteria. We cannot be seen to be slipping further away from that.