Tairgim:—
Go ndeonfar suim nach mó ná £629,700 chun slánuithe na suime is gá chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfas chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31 ú lá de Mhárta, 1953, chun Tuarastal agus Costas i dtaobh Foraoiseachta (Uimh. 13 de 1946), lena n-áirítear Deontas-i-gCabhair chun Talamh a Thógaint.
Tá laghdú de £217,350 sa Meastachán thar mar a vótáladh anuraidh. Méadú sna leithreasaí-i-gcabhair is ciontach le £56,500 den mhéid sin. Fairis sin, bhí i gceist anuraidh caiteachas de £236,000 thar an gcoiteann agus níor ghá ach £17,000 den mhéid sin a chur isteach i Meastachán na bliana seo. Fágann san gur mó Meastachán na bliana seo le £58,160 sna gnáth-fhórálacha thar mar a vótáladh anuraidh.
An méid talaimh nua a ceannaítear agus an t-achar a cuirtear gach bliain na pointi is mó spéise don ghnáthdhuine. I rith na bliana seo caite, ceannaíodh thar 15,000 acraí de thalamh inphlandála agus cuireadh 15,000 eile. Bíodh is gurb iad seo na figiúiri is mó a frítheadh riamh, níl an scéal chomh sásúil chor ar bith agus a dhealraionn sé. Níl ach cúltaisce de 31,500 acraí againn go fóill, rud a fhágann nach cóir thar 10,500 acraí a chur in aghaidh na bliana. Tá socraithe agam, ámh, 12,500, an t-achar is mó is féidir a chur gan dochar d'obair riachtanach eile, a chur i mbliana.
Tá riaráistí mór sa ghnáth-obair— buinní a ghearradh agus bóithre a dhéanamh, agus rudaí eile—chun na foraoiseacha a choiméad i dtreo agus caithfear cur chuige sin nó déanfar buan-damáiste do na coillte. Ní bheidh aon laghdú ar an bhfostaíocht de bharr an curadóireachta a laghdú, de bhrí go mbeidh na h-oibritheoirí ag tabhairt faoin obair eile—obair atá níos tábhachtaí faoi láthair.
Some criticism has been directed against the apparent reduction in the amount of money provided for this service. The net decrease on the 1951-52 Estimate amounts to £217,350; of this, £56,500 is due to increased allowance for Appropriations-in-Aid, so that the decrease on the gross Estimate is only £160,840. The 1951-52 Estimate included a sum of £236,000 for abnormal expenditure of a major nature, of which it is necessary to repeat only £17,000 in the current Estimate. The major items of abnormal expenditure were stockpiling of tools and fencing materials to the extent of £153,000 and the purchase of heavy draining and subsoiling machinery for which £45,500 was provided. If these abnormal provisions in the two Estimates were excluded from the reckoning, the 1952-53 gross Estimate would show an increase of £58,160 over the 1951-52 figure.
In recent years, public interest in forestry development has been centred on the rate at which additional land is being acquired and planted, and there has been insistent and unremitting pressure on my Department to increase the annual planting rate at all costs and by every means in its power. Despite every effort, it proved impracticable up to 1950-51 to increase the planting rate even to the pre-war target of 10,000 acres. In that year, the total area planted was 9,372 acres. Through an extreme effort in 1951-52 an area of 15,000 acres was planted.
This will seem very satisfactory and heartening to those whose knowledge of forestry is so limited that they believe that all that is necessary to provide timber from home resources is to put down young plants and that you can come back in 50 or 60 years and cut down a mature crop of good quality timber. The real position is far different. The planting of the young trees is but the commencement of 50 years of intensive care and cultivation, and the final reaping of a satisfactory crop is dependent on that intensive management throughout the rotation. Neglect of, or delay in attention to, the successive silvicultural requirements concerned is certain to result in poor crops and uneconomic returns.
In the early years following the establishment of a new plantation, it must be kept free of long grass which would smother the young plants, and plants which fail to strike must be replaced; if that replacement is delayed too long, the growing height of the plantation ultimately makes replacement of the failures impossible and the eventual stand of timber will be uneven and less productive than it should be. At a later stage, attention has to be given to weeding and pruning of the plantation. Then, about 15 to 20 years after the plantation is laid down, thinning must commence and must be repeated at intervals of about five years until the crop reaches maturity. Serious damage and loss are likely to result if thinning is not carried out at the proper stage of growth. There should, therefore, be a thinning programme for each forest and this should be followed systematically. The areas requiring thinning have increased greatly in the past few years and need attention urgently.
Thinning is, undoubtedly, one of the most important operations in forestry and requires an enormous amount of time and labour in comparison with the initial planting. There are many important centres where new planting is now subsidiary to other operations and where, in the absence of an adequate labour force, planting can be pushed only to the detriment of other work.
Thinning is the most effective, if not, the sole, means by which growth and development of plantations can be controlled to suit requirements. Obviously, all the trees cannot reach a final crop and the practice of thinning favours the more desirable trees at the expense of the undesirable ones. To leave the trees fight it out for themselves would not be forestry but folly. Irrespective of what markets may exist for the thinnings, the work must be undertaken to ensure a good final crop. There is, of course, a good market for thinnings and this expanding and remunerative market will be able to take all the thinnings the forestry division have to offer.
I want to stress the importance of all this cultivation and management which must be undertaken in established plantations. I want to make it clear to the House that my Department would be failing in its duty and would not be serving the forestry needs of the country if it were to allow the urge for the creation of fresh plantations to become its sole criterion of progress. It would be disastrous to permit the proper care and development of the plantations already established to suffer because the available facilities, including trained technical staff and labour, were inadequate to handle essential maintenance operations and at the same time cope with an increased planting programme.
Acceleration of planting on the scale which has occurred over the past few years has imposed a very severe strain on the service at a time when thinning requirements were also mounting rapidly. I have been advised and have satisfied myself that there is much overdue thinning to be carried out and that there are arrears of replacements of plants which failed to be made up because of the concentration on fresh planting. Unless these matters are attended to without further delay, irretrievable damage may be caused. I think the House should know that this situation exists and I am sure Deputies will agree with my decision that we must not neglect the proper development of the existing plantations which have already progressed towards the stage when they will benefit the country for the sake of laying down ever-increasing acreage of new plantations.
I have gone into the whole question very fully with the forestry division of the Department and I have directed that this important operation of thinning, and the allied work of constructing roads for the extraction of the thinnings must be given due precedence at busy existing forest centres, even though it may reduce the extent to which we can undertake this year or next year the planting of land which happens to be available at these centres.
Inevitably, that means a certain contraction of our planting potential for the country as a whole. There are other factors, too, which are militating against a high planting target for 1952-53. The total plantable reserve now stands at about 31,500 acres. We are seeking to increase that reserve by every means in our power. Extra recruitment of inspectors which has now taken place has brought the staff engaged on the acquisition of land to a higher figure than ever before, and Deputies will see from the Estimate that there is a big increase in the amount which we hope to spend on the acquisition of land in the current year. However, as I have stated, the reserve from which we can now draw for a planting programme for 1952-53 stands at only 31,500 acres. At that, it is only slightly higher—by 500 acres—than 12 months ago. This reserve, therefore, is still insufficient, even apart from limitations which I shall mention in a moment or two, to support an annual planting programme greater than 10,000 acres.
The House is aware that, for the proper planning of nursery production and its co-ordination with planting requirements, there should be available a plantable reserve three times as big as the annual planting programme. In other words, we should now be able to sow seed to produce plants in the species and quantities required to suit land which we can now earmark for planting three years hence. We have not had such a reserve, and in its absence we have been forced to conduct our nursery work by estimates and guesses. That is not a proper way to conduct any business, and it tends, in the case of forestry, to limit the choice of species for planting in particular sites and to force upon the Department lower standards of fitness of plants when particular species prove to be in short supply. Trees are a long-term crop, and I am sure the House will be solidly in agreement with me in my conviction that it is not merely bad forestry, but bad national policy to be so impatient for high annual planting returns that we cannot tolerate even the few years' delay needed to establish a proper reserve.
I have mentioned that there are still other factors which are militating against a high planting target. These other difficulties spring from the uneven distribution amongst forests of even such plantable reserve of land as we have. There are, as I have already stated, sizeable blocks of plantable land at busy centres at which we cannot secure enough labour to handle big planting programmes in addition to giving proper attention to the management, thinning, etc., of existing plantations. Similarly, there are large blocks at a number of new forests at which there will be little work other than planting for some years, and at some of these fresh acquisitions of land are unlikely. If, to bolster up this year's planting programme, we were to draw heavily on some of these areas, we would in a year or two be forced to dispense with the labour staff which had been trained in the work. That is undesirable from the forestry point of view and from the social aspect. Such excessive inroads on available sources of work have already happened last year in some areas, and I am anxious that they should not be repeated.
There are, too, some forests at which there are large blocks of land available, but the land is of the type on which a great deal of experimental work is needed. We are trying out the effect of mechanical drainage and preparation in these areas, and we would be unwise to plant them up too rapidly and without waiting until we ascertain what success will follow last year's initial experimental planting. In the current year, this experimental work will go ahead, but we must move cautiously.
When due regard is had to all these factors, Deputies will not be surprised to learn that the maximum planting programme which my Department can properly undertake in 1952-53 has had to be limited to 12,500 acres. Even that programme is excessive by reference to the plantable reserve; indeed its achievement will depend on the inclusion of this year's planting of a number of areas which have not yet been taken over. Compared with the area planted in 1951-52, which provisional returns put at 15,000 acres, it might seem that I should have to defend the 12,500 acre programme as a reduction or a retrograde step. Rather have I to defend it as being still too large in the light of our resources. A programme of even 12,500 acres can only be justified on the basis that some aspects of our organisation, e.g. nursery production, had already been geared to a high pitch, and that we can hope that the increased efforts we are making to expedite the acquisition of land will enable us to keep up a 12,500 acre annual programme, and perhaps extend it without crippling the whole machine.
To enable the planting rate to be increased over the next few years, if land availabilities permit and presuming that necessary maintenance work is not interfered with, I have directed that nursery production should be geared to a 15,000 acre planting programme and this year's nursery work will be on that basis.
A planned programme of steady development over a period of years is a fundamental requirement if we are to secure the best results, that is to say, the largest and quickest return in timber output.
To complete the picture, I should give Deputies at least a brief indication of the rest of the work programme to be undertaken by the forestry service in 1952/53.
Apart from the planting of new areas on the scale proposed, it is hoped to replant areas destroyed by fire totalling 238 acres and to carry out necessary replacements of failures on 7,366 acres of young plantations. Both these operations have been suffering in recent years from the concentration on fresh planting. There are over 43,000 acres requiring grass-cleaning and over 14,000 acres for weeding and pruning.
Thinning, which I have emphasised because of its importance and urgency, has to be undertaken on areas totalling 9,596 acres, as compared with an average annual rate of about 3,000 acres in recent years. Whether we will overtake that heavy thinning programme in full is doubtful, but it is intended to make an all-out effort to get this essential work up to date. The work programmes also include preliminary work on the construction of 48,400 yards of new roads and the metalling of 45,000 yards of new roads. Finally, there will be the usual annual increase in general maintenance work on existing roads, drains, firelines, etc.
I need hardly say that, with all this work to be undertaken, a reduction in the planting programme to 12,500 acres does not mean an equivalent fall in employment on forestry work. To illustrate this, the present aggregate authorised labour force for the forests totals 3,912 men, as compared with an average total of 3,382 men employed in 1951-52. If Deputies will examine the various labour heads in the Estimate they will see that there are increases totalling £80,000 under the heads of nurseries, maintenance and timber conversion in forests.
Under the heads of capital and constructional expenditure, the labour provisions are reduced by an aggregate of £71,000, but that figure is one that needs to be qualified in so far as the provisions under these heads in 1951-52 were estimated in relation to a planting programme of 20,000 acres which proved impossible to attain. To sum up, the aggregate allowance for forest labour is £9,000 greater than in last year's Estimate.
Since, in this general survey of the programme being undertaken during the year, I have covered all the more important aspects of the various provisions in the Estimate, I do not propose to do more than comment briefly on one or two of the individual sub-heads.
In sub-head C (1), Acquisition of Land, £100,000 is being provided as compared with a provision of £65,000 in the main Estimate for 1951-52. In the Supplementary Estimate for that year an additional sum had to be made available because of abnormally heavy expenditure on the purchase of the Shelton Abbey and Kinnitty Castle estates. In 1951-52 a total of 19,065 acres was acquired at a cost of £121,660. The area acquired included over 15,000 acres of plantable land as compared with a plantable content of 10,866 acres in acquisitions during the previous year. Seven new forest centres were established, bringing the total to 150.
The balance in the Grant-in-Aid Fund at the 31st March, 1952, was over £23,000 so that the amount now to be provided will bring the total available for expenditure in 1952-53 to over £120,000. As there are no exceptional purchases, such as Shelton Abbey, likely to be made this year, this sum should be adequate to enable acquisition to be pushed forward even more rapidly than in 1951-52.
In sub-head H—Appropriations-in-Aid—the provision last year was £116,240, but the actual receipts were in the neighourhood of £175,000 due mainly to the rapid development of the market for light thinnings for wallboard paper pulp, etc., and to the high market value of pitprop timber. Supplies of both types of material from State forests are increasing, but supplies of mature timber, obtained from the clearing of woodlands acquired with land and from which the greater part of the Department's revenue has hitherto been derived are less plentiful. It is estimated that our receipts this year should be similar to last year's. Allowance is made for receipts totalling £172,750.
Forestry Act.—The number of felling notices received in 1951-52 showed a slight decrease as compared with the previous year.
Under the Forestry Act, 1946, all replanting conditions attached to licences issued under the 1928 Act were due for fulfilment by the 31st March, 1952. Inquiries have shown that in many cases the replanting has been carried out, but there are also numerous cases where the licensees' obligations have not been fulfilled. These cases will be followed up during the year, and as adequate warning has already been given individually to those concerned I am afraid that it will be necessary to institute proceedings in many of these cases.
Although the restrictions on tree felling embodied in the Forestry Act are by now well known the number of cases of illegal felling reported to my Department during the year 1951-52 totalled 166 and was the highest for some years past. Proceedings were instituted in 143 cases and in 123 of them convictions were obtained. In 92 of these cases the persons concerned were fined. Those convicted included 21 timber merchants and eight others who were found guilty of offences under the Act arising from the purchase of trees which the owner was not entitled to cut down. Timber merchants and other purchasers of timber sometimes do not realise that they may render themselves liable to prosecution by not ensuring that those from whom they purchase standing timber are entitled to cut it down. If the vendor of the timber cannot himself produce evidence that it can be felled without contravening the provisions of the Forestry Act any doubt can be cleared quite readily by an enquiry at the nearest Garda station.
