Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am very grateful for the opportunity to come before the Seanad this evening. I am very thankful to be in the position I am in, especially now because of the difficulties we have in forestry. Following the recent storm we are in the unprecedented situation that there are 25,000 ha of trees on the ground. Before that happened, we had a very serious situation in forestry, in that not enough farmers were planting forestry. As there are competing schemes, what we in the Department need to do is make it more attractive.There is a struggle between competing schemes and the fact is that there are other avenues of land use and people are worried about forestry. There is no point in trying to make this out to be any nicer than it is. Forestry got a bad name in recent years. One of the main reasons is that if you wanted to thin or clear fell your forest, or if you wanted a permit to make a road, you heard nightmare stories, which were factual, that it would take a year, two years or two and a half years. Nobody should have to wait that long for anything from any Department. That should not be the case.

I am very grateful and thankful to the officials in the Department and the people from the Department working on the ground every day. They are improving every day. They are going to be so good by the time this thing is finished that they are going to be frightening. People will no more have an application sent in when they will get a licence back. I do not want to be flippant about it because there is a serious side to it. There must be proper assessment and evaluation. You would evaluate an awful lot in a year, two years or two and a half years, so that type of nonsense will not be allowed to continue in the future. I stress that it absolutely will not. I want to give Senators confidence.

I very much appreciate the work Senators do. In coming here today, I would like to think that in their constituencies they would become very strong advocates for planting trees. We want to have a balance. We want to have native trees, through the agroforestry scheme, which I hope to improve. To be blunt, I do not agree with the terms of the scheme at present. They are not good enough. The scheme is not attractive enough. The first bit of advice I would give to a farmer who wants to plant agroforestry at the moment is to wait until we improve the scheme. I want it to be improved, and it will be improved. If Senators do not believe in what we are doing they will not have the confidence to tell people in their constituencies that they are convinced, so I want to convince them.

I accept that we have a lot of work to do. An awful lot of land is ineligible. I debate the science that says it is ineligible. My son Jackie and I spent a number of days recently walking ground with people who were very smart about their business. The one thing I have learned is that if you were up in the sky today above Ireland looking down at the forestry we have, you would be refused if you were looking to plant that ground under the present terms and conditions. The vast majority of the forests we have, both under the ownership of Coillte and privately owned, if you were looking to plant them today you would be told: "We are very sorry, you are not eligible." Where would that leave us?

We have an awful job of work. I am very grateful for people's work. The officials in the Department have bought into this. They want to turn this ship around, because if it does not turn around it will sink. The Government set a target of 800,000 ha a year. As Senators are aware, things have not been as bad with regard to planting since 1946. We must improve on that. If we fail during my time in this Department, I will have been a failure, forestry will be a failure and it will do untold damage to us in emissions and the fines we will have to pay in the future. Every one of us - be it Senators, TDs, Ministers, or councillors at home in the constituencies - want to see people having confidence in planting trees again. In doing that, we in the Department have to up our game. It is our responsibility to make it more attractive. It is my fault if it is not got right. I am very invested in improving it.

As Senators will be dealing with people who have questions for them, I will go through a couple of headline points about the storm, some of which they may know already. There are 25,000 ha of forestry on the ground. They should not think that is a disaster. It is not as though the product is gone. The majority of it is windblown but it is still connected to the ground. It is not losing weight. Members should always remember that the best place to store timber is inside a wood when it is connected to the ground. That is the best place to keep it. Approximately 14,000 ha of that is owned by Coillte and the rest of it is private.The one thing I wanted to do at the very beginning was ensure people would be safe. A couple of very bad things have happened by people going at work themselves. Indeed, in my county we had an awful incident recently involving a chainsaw. The first thing I would say to people is that whatever about timber or their forestry or anything, they should be safe about what work they are doing. Get the proper assessment, get the proper foresters to come in, get the proper advice and get in the contractors when the time is right.

I have been visiting the sawmills. I have every confidence in our sawmills. Some people might have this impression that there is a lot of timber on the ground, so the sawmills are going to blackguard it and drag down the price. I would not agree with that. They are not going to do that. I am very proud of the sawmills we have in Ireland because I see the massive amount of money they have expended - hundreds of millions of euro creating jobs at home, turning a raw product into a multitude of uses to the highest of standards and exporting across to England and up to the North. It is great to see it. It is great to see our natural resource being turned into fine products that are up to the highest of standards. We have a job of work to do, including the haulage people and the contractors who will actually harvest this timber and bring it out. However, we only want to it to be brought out as it is ready to go to the sawmills because we do not want it to be losing weight and losing income for the farmers who own it.

It is very upsetting, of course, especially for an older person who goes out to see his or her lovely forest flattened to the ground, and it looks awful, and that person thinks it is a disaster. It is not, really, because it is still connected to the ground in the majority of cases and it is not really losing value, and those people will be taken care of by their forester and the contractors that will come along. It might look bad and it might seem bad, but they still have a valuable crop, especially if it is of a certain age, if it is over 25, 26 and 27 years. Yes, of course, I will not deny that if it is younger forestry, if it is 15 or 16 years old, they do not have the weight on the timber and if that timber is knocked, yes, of course, that is difficult.

One thing Senators will be asked, and I want them to know, is that there is going to be a reconstitution scheme. It is not there at present because we needed to be sure of all the analysis of the data before we could actually announce it. We cannot say what we will compensate unless we know the scale of the problem first. Therefore, people will ask what will happen when they take out their timber now and whether they will miss out on a grant to plant again. No, they will not. They are perfectly entitled to take out their timber and, yes, they can retrospectively apply for the reconstitution scheme when it will be in place, and it will be in place. I just hope we will be able to put together the money to make it strong enough to take the harm out of having to replant. Senators might ask why people would need the replanting grant now at a time when they would not get it otherwise. Quite simply, it is because of what I just said about how some of the timber might not be heavy enough, and if people are getting a cheque in the hand from the sawmills for their timber, they do not want to have to be spending too much of it replanting to get themselves back to where they were in the first instance.

The ash dieback, of course, has been a big issue. The reconstitution scheme continues. Those affected can avail of the climate action payment. To date, almost €3.56 million has been paid out on that. I have been visiting situations on the ground. One thing we have heard an awful lot about are the ESB outages. I know that is of great importance to all Senators because many of them have seen the trouble this has caused in the constituencies they are from. People like the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, are doing excellent work to ensure the corridors that need to be provided will be provided. We need to ensure the landowners will be consulted and compensated if at all possible. We just have to try to get that job of work done.