Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House to deal with this matter related to forestry, which is an area to which she is hugely committed. She will recall we had our last little engagement on this matter back in April. I had hoped we would have made some progress. In case there is any misunderstanding, I am absolutely committed to forestry. I see its significance and importance. As well as sitting on the Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage I sit on the Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The forestry issue has exercised the latter committee quite extensively, as the Minister of State will know. To be fair, she has engaged extensively with us, as she has with other people.

I will take her through a few points. In November 2022 the Government announced a new €1.3 billion forestry programme for 2023 to 2027. This new programme was expected to replace the previous one, which expired at the end of 2022. The Department submitted the request for state aid approval only in early 2023. We had difficultly in understanding the date, but we now know that is all done. It is July and the new programme is still awaiting formal state aid approval from the European Commission. The new programme is also subject to an ongoing strategic environmental assessment, SEA. There may have been a draft or a preliminary SEA and then there is the other issue of an appropriate assessment process. The Minister of State is familiar with all the assessment processes. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is not in a position to launch its new forestry schemes until a satisfactory strategic environmental assessment is in place, along with a number of other issues. I understand the Department has been engaging with the Commission in the past few months to secure approval.

As the Minister of State knows, the Department cannot issue licenses for granting afforestation roads or forestry support schemes until the new programme is in place. There has been slow progress and I would like progress on that. I understand there can be no new approvals until the appropriate environmental assessment has been concluded and that is ongoing work. Strategic environmental assessment is a process for formal, systematic evaluation of the likely significant environmental effects of implementing a plan or programme before the decision is made to adopt such a plan. It has been suggested the SEA report does not appear to adequately address concerns about the piecemeal forestry plantations on high-value farmland. I have engaged with people in Europe on this issue, as well as other stakeholders and with people I would expect to be close to these ongoing and protracted exchanges of information with the Department and the Commission itself. There is a suggestion there are issues around the SEA.

The Minister of State is clearly very favourably inclined to the protection of the environment and biodiversity, as am I, and that is good, important and significant. However, what is clear with respect to this debate is the need for transparency. We have talked about transparency across the whole field of public life in these Houses in recent weeks, but the Government needs to share with all stakeholders rather than just some how critical the EU is of the entire Irish forestry model being advanced in this programme. I am told the Commission is seriously critical of the sitka spruce model that has been ongoing and which it is proposed continue as part of the new plan. I hear the Commission is extremely concerned about the Coillte-Gresham House deal. There are a whole range of issues. The Government has a programme. The programme is ambitious and rightly so, but the stakeholders at large are outside and do not know what is happening. They want more information and greater clarity.

I finish by saying I have raised time and time again with the Minister of State and the Department the role of the Social Economic Environmental Forestry Association, SEEFA. On its behalf I again ask that the Minister of State and her officials meet with its representatives. SEEFA represents a huge sector within forestry. Its members are keen and have made numerous requests to meet the Minister of State and Department officials and have not been successful. She might shed some light on the reasons behind that.