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

I want to deal with everything properly. I really appreciate the Senators' engagement. I will start with Senator Paul Daly. With regard to the 6,000 ha, he made a very important point. They have approval and the Senator asked what is happening with them. Myself and Mr. Barry Delany, who is the head of forestry, are working on this already. In the very near future - I am committing to have it done within the next four weeks - we will be contacting every person who has approval and asking why they have not moved. If we need to do something to persuade or encourage them, we will be doing it. These people have a licence. They are ready to go. I am scratching my head and wondering why they are not planting. The Senator was very right to raise that.

With regard to the licences, to make it clear in case I did not do so already, previously, foresters had to get a thinning licence to thin and then a clear-fell licence to clear-fell. I merged those two licences into one. If Senator Mullen has a thinning licence, he can now clear-fell on the strength of it, which saves bureaucracy and time. The result is that 60% of all the timber that is on the ground now, toppled or whatever, already has a licence. It was said by a few people that this was a matter of urgency and that it is urgent to get the timber out of the forests. That is factually not correct. Of course, if you have a forest and it is knocked, you want to see it gone and turned into money. However, it is not dying, rotting or wasting. If timber has been cracked, of course that is a different thing. I want to make that clear. A number of people said it is urgent. Of course I would like to see a timeframe of a year and a half to 24 months, but that is the type of time we are talking about. The forest is not on fire, it is knocked and it is still worth money. I thank Senator Paul Daly for his kind words.

Senators Tully and Brady raised the amount of planting. This year we are improving but I am not standing here boasting about what we are doing. We might be doing better than we were doing, but what we were doing was a disaster. At present we are only a small bit better than a disaster. Do not think I am standing here saying we are doing great and asking for a pat on the back. That is not the case. We are coming from a very bad place.

Senator Mullen raised the applications and said that when a person is dealing with an official in the Department, he would like for that person to take ownership of that application. I do not want them to own the application for too long. What I want them to do is turn it around and send it out with "approved" on it. I would like for them to know who they are dealing with, but not to be getting to know them too well that they would have to be contacting them a lot or anything like that. One thing I did not say earlier was that I have an ambition that every forest in Ireland that is privately owned will be certified. Certifying a forest will give people an interest in their forest again. I am not looking to put an imposition of money on them. My aim is that the Department will be paying for it. Any person who has a forest will go to their forester and ask them to do up a management plan and get it certified. We will have a national certification scheme. Senators will know this, but for anyone who is listening, certification is like being Bord Bia-approved for your beef. It is like quality assured status for your forest. It will be a good thing and will give people an interest in their forest. It will give them pride in it. Most important, when they are cutting it and sending it to the sawmills - at present the sawmills can take uncertified timber from a forest but if it is certified, it is all the better. That is very important.

On the broadleaf trees, Senator Mullen said the premiums are not enough. I have dealt with that already through the issue of agroforestry. The Senator referred to the ESB power lines. Those points were very well made and I will come back to them again. With regard to the premiums for broadleaf trees and agroforestry, Senator Malcolm Noonan and I are very good friends but sometimes we do not agree. He said that agroforestry could be a help when it comes to things like reducing the national herd. There is no intention by the Department of agriculture to interfere in any way with our national herd. We do not want to do that.