Coillte, as a state company, is treated differently by state agencies and departments, including the Forestry Division when it comes to observing environmental standards.
That contributes to the detrimental environmental impact of much of our forestry which was recently highlighted by the EU Commission.
Following yesterday’s Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture meeting on Coillte’s forestry deal with a British investment fund, I debated the matter with Forestry Minister Pippa Hackett (Green Party) on Virgin Media’s ‘The Tonight Show.’
I raised the different rates of funding provided by the Department of Agriculture to male and female applicants aged 41-55 years under the TMAS scheme and questioned whether it amounts to unlawful discrimination.
Clare Independent TD Michael McNamara says the Government can do more to ease high timber prices and the consequent impact on construction costs by speeding up efforts to reduce the backlog of forestry license applications across the country.
Read MoreClare Independent TD Michael McNamara has told the Dáil that farmers are being prevented from harvesting forestry they plant and there is no incentive to replace monoculture Sitka spruce plantations with something more sustainable.
Deputy McNamara was speaking during a Motion presented to the Dáil by Deputy Jackie Cahill, Cathaoirleach of the Joint committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
The Clare TD told Minister of State for Forestry, Senator Pippa Hackett, that the type of forestry being carried out in Ireland is not environmentally sustainable.
He said, “There is no sense of urgency, and farmers are seeing no urgency, with regard to their applications to plant trees or to cut the forestry they have planted, perhaps to replace it with something more environmentally sustainable.”
Deputy McNamara continued, “I hope we are about to see a change because all the talk in the world about afforestation in Glasgow – one can fly anywhere in the world and produce grandiloquent statements – is completely worthless unless it is backed up by what farmers are experiencing on the ground. We need action now as we are nearly half-way through the lifetime of this Government and we need it soon.”
“I ask the Minister of State to move outside her comfort zone. Stop talking to the converted and talk to farmers, ordinary people and landowners. They are the ones who are the future of afforestation in Ireland if there is going to be one. Above all, the Minister of State needs to back up the talk with actions, which have been singularly missing up to now,” he stated.