Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I will pick up on a couple of the points that have been talked about during the course of the debate. Coillte has been a focus for me for a long time. The Minister of State may or may not be aware that I have put forward proposed legislation on the mandate for nature, which was about changing the mandates of Coillte. Coillte is the largest landowner in the State, owning and controlling 7% of the land. Unfortunately, we have seen over a number of years policies in Coillte that have moved away from native trees and increasingly towards more and more Sitka spruce. We have seen the term time for wood decrease. We now import all of our telephone poles because those need to be trees that have a longer lifespan of 60 years, whereas we are seeing trees with a 30-year lifespan being increasingly used in forestry. Crucially, there is a short-term mindset in Coillte. That project is a really good example of it. With respect to the previous Government, to simply say, "Let's have a non-profit bit of Coillte", is not an adequate solution. Rather, we should be looking to shift the outdated mandate of Coillte, which is left over from the eighties. Coillte is very much a commercial forestry business. In the shareholder letters sent by the Government to Coillte, phrases like "cash generative" are used. It is not just value for money being talked about but short-term delivery of cash as the priority for Coillte rather than a longer term delivery of value for money or value for the State.

I would love an opportunity to meet and engage with the Minister of State and discuss with him the shifting of the mandate from it being the business of forestry on a commercial basis to one that is more sustainable economically, socially and environmentally. When we think about that, it is actually very solid. We still have the economic bit, which is important. We have to deliver economically through our forestry.However, if we are saying are they delivering for local communities and society, the decisions and choice we make might be different. For example, we know the scandal when there was all of the outrage about going with a large multinational, with Gresham House investors, rather than engaging with local partners. If the Government were to say you can look for the economic return but you have to do it in a way that is socially sustainable, then it would be done in a slightly different way. Similarly, in environmental terms, it would mean that not only would we be delivering and achieving what we need to achieve in terms of climate, first and most important, as other speakers have said, and in terms of biodiversity, pollinators and all of the rest that it is going to deliver for us, but also it would be the kind of thing that would be a bit of insurance for ensuring Ireland has credibility when we go to the next round of big forestry policies. We know there were huge delays in the previous forestry programme, which will expire in 2027, within the term of this Government. A lot of it was the feedback from the European Union at the time and some of what was said, and I looked at all of the correspondence back in November, related to Ireland having too much of a business-as-usual approach.

When you look to the 8,000 ha, and we have heard it talked about a lot, and I will come back to Coillte in a minute, the balance is really off, because there was 250 ha of broadleaf and 250 ha of birch or alder. Agroforestry, which I was delighted to hear the Minister of State mention because it is something that should get a lot more support, was pinned for about 100 ha. Meanwhile, the mixed high forest, which is basically Sitka spruce, was 4,645 ha. We cannot be saying we are doing agroforestry as well when we are doing 100 ha and doing 4,600 ha of Sitka spruce. I will come to that in a minute. This is where I think we need a better form of thinking about it. We need to increase and improve the premiums people get when they are delivering on broadleaf and long term. They should be based on the carbon aspect - that is one part of it - but it should also be based on what they are doing for biodiversity and how they are delivering what I have called the ecological care credit. I know there are lots of farmers around the country who are doing really good work - the riparian riverside scheme is a really good example - and they should be rewarded for it properly, rather than having schemes that benefit massive commercial investors who land in and land out.

Going back to the socially, environmentally and economically sustainable aspect, one thing we learned from Storm Éowyn is that Sitka spruce is a liability when it comes to sustainability. We saw the 11,000 ha of Coillte land that got badly damaged and we saw that Sitka spruce became more damaged. One of the earlier speakers mentioned the phenomenon whereby the edge of the forest was still standing and the centre was gone. I can tell you why. It was because a lot of the edge of the forest is where they stick the broadleaf and, in the middle, you will find large swathes of Sitka that did not and does not stand up to extreme environmental events. That does not just go for those environmental events like the storm. If we look to what happened in Killarney with the terrible forest fires a couple of years ago, what was really interesting was that many of the indigenous trees weathered it. They did not go down in the same way, they were not damaged in the same way, and they had a resilience when it came to those forest fires. There is a lot in terms of the sustainable planting of trees. The right trees in the right places is important, and trees that are actually going to survive and thrive in that location is also important.

There is an opportunity, maybe within this scheme, but certainly going in to the next scheme that is coming and where we will be going back to the European Union - I hope not spending a year and a half messing with it this time to try to get a new scheme or to try to get out of the state aid rules again - to have a really different shift. Someone mentioned those who are looking to replant after Storm Éowyn, the difficulties they face with trees on the ground and all the rest of it, and that they might need help to do it in a different way. I would say we should look to a premium for those who use that as an opportunity to shift towards a different model of forestry.We should look to particular incentives that encourage those who may have relied on the Sitka spruce and a short-term cycle with regard to its harvesting to invest in a longer term product and for them to feel confident that the State will pay them and reward them for that. It is an opportunity.

These are the policies that can be brought into place in general, but the big lever we have is Coillte. If Coillte gives a lead or shifts the way it does forestry, that will be the easiest and quickest thing we will have done with regard to delivering on our climate and biodiversity targets. It will also give leadership and create capacity within the forestry sector that all individual farmers and individual actors will benefit from. What we have seen, however, with the closure of that Natura project, is that Coillte cannot do it if it does not have the right mandate. If Coillte is being told to deliver a little bit of cash this year and that the Department wants to see a return in three years' time but is also being asked to be the engine for a new form of and approach to forestry in the future, there is a contradiction there. I am urging the Minister of State to consider that issue of strengthening its mandate and giving it a mandate that will deliver. Doing so would make Ireland's case much stronger when it comes to accessing EU funds and exemptions in the future, for example. I would love to have the opportunity to engage with the Minister of State on that.

I will raise a couple of other brief issues. I am sorry to be saying so many bad things about the Sitka spruce, but I have a few more bad things to say. There is an issue with regard to pests, including the pine weevil. Other people have talked about ash dieback, but there is also an issue regarding the pests associated with it. Let us be a bit ambitious about our forestry and try to do something substantial. Let us create forests for the ages. Ireland used to have the kind of forests that they built cathedrals from. Let us not just produce forests that give us wood pulp and 20-year products. When we discuss carbon credits and sequestering carbon, we need to be clear and honest. A tree does not start to store carbon until 20 years in. If we are planting trees and cutting them down after 20 years, we are not actually delivering on that. We will get called out on that.

I look forward to further engagement with the Minister of State. I know he is interested in that social component and I hope the environmental component as well. There is much that could be done to improve how we do forestry and learn from some of the unfortunate incidents that have happened over the past year.