The Forestry Bill 2020 has passed Seanad Éireann and is now before the Dáil. The backlog and crisis in forestry means that almost 80,000 trees per day need to be planted of we are to succeed in reaching the target of 400 million trees planted by 2040. It is important to consider a balancing of rights in addition to a public understanding of the process involved if we are to be serious about attaining these ambitious aims over the next twenty years as we have fallen completely behind over some time. I support the Bill and the text of my contribution at Committee Stage in the Seanad is below:
“I support the amendment and wish to make a few general points. I support what has been said about the pace with which the Bill has been brought through. The problems, the arrears and the backlog must have been developing for far longer than the past few months, and it is an awful pity that this problem was not addressed earlier. I am also conscious of the fact that the crisis that has taken place in the forestry business and forestry sector, with the destruction of saplings and so on, is a sign of weak administration, unfortunately.
I support the principle of the Minister’s Bill. We have to balance the rights of the Irish community as a whole to pursue its afforestation targets with the rights of some people who assert the right to object to or to obstruct the implementation of this. In November last year a much-missed former Member of this House, Marie-Louise O’Donnell, queried what the then Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Bruton, was fixing as afforestation targets. He said 250 million trees would be planted in Ireland by 2030. He made this commitment in 2018. Now we are amending that slightly. We have pushed the goalposts out to 400 million trees by 2040.
It should be remembered that the target of the then Minister involved the planting of 69,000 trees every day.
If weekends are taken out of that, it is 90,000 trees per day, every day. The present programme for Government has set not quite as ambitious a target: the trees can be planted over 20 years rather than ten years, and the metrics are slightly more relaxed. However, and this is the fundamental point and the reason I support the Bill, this country, if it is to engage in major afforestation, needs to get serious about it. We need to make it possible to comply with the targets we are setting. There is no point in wandering off to Paris conferences or UN conferences saying we have a plan and then saying, “Hold on a second, though. There are four objectors here and five objectors there.” Then the plan just collapses for want of implementation.
The reason I support this amendment is that I believe the public has to understand the target and the process, and understand that not everybody can live surrounded by a bare landscape if we are to plant 400 million trees over the next 20 years. The Wicklow Mountains will change. The land in Roscommon and Leitrim will change.
Views we used to have will no longer be there. We must get serious if we are going afforest this country. Senator Boyhan gave me a book about the history of afforestation policy in Ireland, going back to Count Plunkett, Sean MacBride and several others who were determined to transform this country with serious afforestation. It creates jobs. We live in a world where the consumption of meat from sheep and cattle is in decline and there are constraints on that form of agriculture. Afforestation is hugely important, and in supporting this amendment, I ask that we remember full transparency regarding the reports being received is a good idea to bring the people with us in this process.
I want to be clear that is not to assist those minorities who want to hold up the process of afforestation. I believe in afforestation, and if we are telling people the truth about the 400 million trees over 20 years or 250 million trees over ten years, we must get serious about this and stop the codology and stop the capacity of people, including people who do not even have to pay a fee, to get involved in afforestation plans and proposals which have very little to do with them. I am supporting the amendment, but I am much more supportive of the Bill.”