Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the Chamber today. I am really enthusiastic about his enthusiasm, and I can vouch for it. I am a veteran of the previous two agriculture committees. I am the only one who sat on the previous agriculture committee with the licensing issues, in particular, that were ongoing.If there were a league table for topics discussed by the agriculture committee, forestry would have topped that league hands down. Although he was not on the committee, the Minister of State used to frequent most of those meetings as a non-member. I am delighted to be able to report to anyone who was not watching those meetings that his attitude and approach has not changed now that he has been elevated to the position of Minister of State. I am enthusiastic about that enthusiasm, if that makes sense.

This is vitally important, and I have scribbled notes the Minister of State can verify, but a word I have highlighted at the top and which he mentioned five times is "confidence". The Minister of State's biggest job of work at the outset of his new role is to reinstil confidence in the sector and the people on the ground - the farmers, landowners and people in the private sector whom we want to bring with us on this journey and who we want to plant trees so that we can meet our targets. I do not like being critical. I am solution driven. I am not going to rehash all the problems, but there were problems, as the Minister of State rightly said. People's confidence in the sector was shattered and still is to an extent. The Minister of State's first and biggest job is to get people's confidence back, and if he can get confidence back in the sector, he will be halfway to square one because he has a big body of work to do. I am not being critical in any way of anyone who went before him, but he has a big body of work to do to get to square one. That is a big ask of any one man, but I know and have confidence that he will do that. I welcome his attitude towards it.

Something might have to sell to get the confidence back. There is always a debate, and it ends up coming down to emissions and climate targets. One would think the only thing a tree did was sequester carbon. Trees are a major part of good biodiversity. Forests and woods play a major role in our tourism industry. Timber is an unbelievable asset in our building trade. The last three never get mentioned, however. It is always about sequestration. I agree wholeheartedly with the Minister of State about where we can and cannot plant trees. The buzz phrase the last time was the right tree in the right place for the right reasons with the right management. I would agree with the Minister of State that maybe we were not putting the right trees in the right place. If we are to get the private sector and the farmers back confident and enthusiastic, we have to open up some of what I would call poorer quality land. We had €1.3 billion invested the last time in the forestry programme. It had to go to Europe to be approved for state aid. However, not only did it come back approved for state aid, it also came back with a list of environmental small print about peaty land and how we could not go to X, Y and Z - the Minister of State knows them. Like him, I would question that. It is an area that needs to be revisited. If we cannot open up all our land for forestry, we are not going to meet our targets.

On the targets and the 8,000 ha, last year it was 1,600 ha. We are getting closer to what might be achieved this year with the returns on the year to date so far. However, when we are coming in at 1,600 ha when it is meant to be 8,000 ha, how are we going to balance that book at the end of the day? For our climate targets, we have in one column 8,000 ha of forestry that is balancing something that is emitting in the other column. If we do not have the 8,000, which we are not going to have, how are we going to reduce the emissions column? Who is going to suffer down the line? Do we need to be looking at that at this stage? There are questions that need to be asked.

I do not know if the Minister of State said it today, but it is in documentation I have read, that there are 6,000 ha that are ready to go. Will they be planted? There is a lack of confidence because of what has gone on - the shenanigans that have happened, for want of a better word - over the past four, eight and ten years. People who applied for licences three, four or five years ago only got them last year or at the beginning of this year or whenever. Have they moved on? Has anybody done a survey as to whether the 6,000 ha that are ready to go and that are licensed will be planted, or is that just another figure we are using to balance an equation that may not be a realistic one?

I read a couple of weeks ago in The Journal that the EPA has now said there could be anything up to a 7% reduction in agricultural emissions based on the figures. It was using a standard European or worldwide figure, but when it gets to more Ireland-specific figures, it has actually admitted that what we have been calculating or using as our emissions could be at least 7% less. How will that affect our sums going forward? Let me mention the few things the Minister of State specifically mentioned. With regard to the storm, I welcome the fact that he set up the windblow task force immediately. I agree we can take positives out of this. It is not the end of the world and not a matter of negatives, but I have a few questions about replanting. I saw a forest whose condition was hard to believe in that, while the outside trees were all still standing, those in the centre were all down, showing how nature is an amazing thing. If there is to be removal and you make a roadway to replant the trees, will saplings survive in a mature forest environment, which may be the habitat of larger animals, which may have different biodiversity and where life may not get through to the extent expected? It may not just be as simple as taking out one tree and putting in another. Maybe the farmers and growers will need a little research and help on this one. The matter may not be straightforward for the reasons I have given, including the environment, large animals, different biodiversity and the lack of sunlight. We may need to put a bit of thought into this going forward.

The Minister of State can come back to me on some of these points and does not have to answer today. One of the last initiatives we dealt with at the last agriculture committee considering forestry was the additional support provided under the reconstitution and underplanting scheme, RUS, for ash dieback. I remember there was divided opinion as to whether what was on offer – the €5,000 CAP payment the Minister of State mentioned and the additional money for clearing sites – would be enough. The Dáil came to an end and we did not have any more meetings, so the Minister of State might update us on the feedback on the additional supports.

When we mention dieback, we have to mention biosecurity and the bark beetle. If we have learned anything from the ash dieback scenario, it is that we need to keep out foreign diseases. With the storm damage and repair work, there is a lot of talk about machines coming in from Europe and elsewhere. We need to be extra vigilant about biosecurity and biodiversity. We have to keep the bark beetle out at all costs.

As I said about land, there is an argument made that when peaty soil is disturbed when sowing trees, it releases a certain amount of carbon and that this amount may not be weighed against the sequestration of the tree. When people are doing the sums, do they take into consideration the biodiversity and other benefits of the tree? Do they take into the equation the displacement of concrete by timber at the point of end use? Considering all these advantages of a tree, maybe a little carbon loss at planting might not be bad at all. If we opened up a lot more land that is not now eligible, as the Minister of State said, we would get back the confidence of the farmers and reach the required acreage.