Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will raise what is a very serious issue for me and many others out there. We are fortunate that we had no fatalities on our roads on the back of Storm Debi over the weekend. I have no doubt that, if we had, I would not be the only one raising the issue of ash dieback in our roadside trees here this morning. It was through lucky fate that there were no fatalities. In my own area, a lot of trees and branches came down as a result of trees having died from ash dieback. There are thousands of such trees in our roadside hedges. While I have raised this issue on numerous occasions under the forestry brief in my role as agriculture spokesperson and while we have had discussions on it, this is an aspect of the ash dieback issue we need a debate on.

There are three Ministries involved. Forestry, trees and reconstitution under the planting scheme that is in place for people who have forestry affected by ash dieback come under the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. It is probably also a transport issue but will most likely need to be dealt with by the local authorities, which come under the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. I do not know which Minister should be brought in first although I believe we would need to start with the Minister for Transport.

There is no point in all of us coming in here the morning after a storm when there has been a fatality. That is closing the door when the horse is gone. I want to bring this issue to the fore immediately. Let us get the issue resolved. When affected trees die, they crumble. Even professionals say that cutting down such trees is an issue. They have grabs to put around trees and, if the tree has gone bad enough, they squeeze the tree and turn it to pulp, which then falls in the opposite direction from where the professionals had intended. It is not a thing that farmers or landowners can do themselves. There needs to be an evaluation of every roadside tree. This would probably be organised by the local authorities. There also needs to be some kind of grant aid or financial support for landowners to remove trees because, if there is not, they will not do it. As I have said, I do not want to be the one standing up the morning after our next storm if we have not done something about this and there has been a fatality and neither does anyone else here. I urgently request that debate.