Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Taoiseach to the House and thank Senator Ardagh for sharing her time, although it may not be on a 50-50 basis. I am the spokesperson for agriculture in my party and my colleague on the Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine spoke about agriculture so I will not rehash the areas he mentioned but one that needs serious attention is the whole forestry sector. There is a new forestry programme, which looks good on paper, but if you look at the figures of what planting is going on at the moment, it is not happening. Forestry was to be the silver bullet for us meeting our climate action targets. It is not happening and it needs to be addressed. A major area I would also like to address within forestry is ash dieback. An improved scheme needs to be put in place - there is a scheme available - for people who planted and are suffering from ash dieback through no fault of their own. It was a disease brought into the country through no fault of the people who planted. One-off trees in roadside hedges and ditches now suffering from ash dieback are becoming a danger and will fall on days like yesterday, with the storm, or lesser, because they are rotting due to ash dieback. They are a danger to public transport and people using the roads. It is an enormous expense and cost for the farmers or land owners who own the hedges with those trees in them. A scheme will have to be put in place to help those farmers and roadside land owners to remove those trees or we will all be up in arms when there is a fatality.