Vol. 153 No. 7
The concluding stages of the motion on forestry can be taken with this stage of the Bill. Any Deputy wishing to speak on the motion may say what he wishes on this Second Reading.
Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted, and 20 Deputies being present,
In moving the Second Reading of this Bill I should like to refer first to its general structure. It deals with various matters affecting the acquisition of land for forestry purposes which are intimately concerned with the intricacies and principles of the law of property as it obtains in this country. That fact in itself made it inevitable that the actual terms of the Bill would be technical in the legal sense. It is, too, an amending measure, since the most convenient and effective way of achieving the desired objectives is the adaptation of the existing provisions of Part III of the Forestry Act, 1946. Amending legislation is never easy to read and assimilate and when it is, of its very nature, technical, there is all the greater difficulty. I have, therefore, circulated with the Bill a very full explanatory memorandum which will, I think, have given Deputies a clear picture of the Bill's purposes and of the way in which it proposes to achieve those purposes. Deputies on all sides of the House have shown a helpful interest in the Bill and I was anxious that every Deputy should be able to approach this debate with a full knowledge of the Bill's significance. I hope that, by including in the explanatory memorandum arguments and so on which in the normal course I might have reserved for the actual debate, I have achieved this objective.
The Bill's scope, as set out in its long title, is "to facilitate the acquisition of land for the purposes of the Forestry Act, 1946". Section 9 of that Act gives the Minister for Lands power "to purchase or take on lease or otherwise acquire any land suitable for forestry or required for purposes in connection with afforestation or with the management of any woods or forests or any rights (so required) over any land". There is nothing restrictive in this provision and nothing that requires amendment.
The same Act contains the statutory powers under which land can be acquired compulsorily for forestry purposes. The power to acquire compulsorily relates to any land which the Minister considers it desirable to acquire for the purposes of the Act. There is a limitation placed on the Minister's power of compulsory acquisition in that he is not allowed to exercise compulsion at his own discretion. If he wants to acquire land compulsorily he must apply to the lay comsioners of the Land Commission and his application is adjudicated on by the lay commissioners, with a right of appeal by any interested party to the Appeal Tribunal. That machinery, under which the Land Commission can veto the compulsory acquisition of land for forestry purposes was, in itself, a modernisation of the provisions of the Forestry Act, 1919, but retained the principle that an independent body, with responsibility in the general field of national land use, should adjudicate on any proposal to acquire land compulsorily for forestry purposes.
Speaking on the Report Stage of the debate on the Forestry Act, 1946, the then Minister for Lands declared emphatically that the Land Commission was the most suitable instrument by which land could be acquired (Volume 100, column 1030, debate of 2nd April, 1946). He stressed the danger of giving compulsory powers of acquisition which could result in the surrender of portions of holdings in such fashion as to render them uneconomic, and the House accepted that view. It is a view to which I personally wholeheartedly subscribe. The idea of a State authority acquiring land, save for some very limited and localised project such as an airport, and in so doing running counter to the whole activities of the Land Commission is completely unacceptable to anyone who has the interests of Irish farming at heart.
It is a fact that little use has so far been made of the compulsory powers of acquisition enshrined in the Forestry Act, 1946. Again I would refer to the statements of the Minister of the day who, in opening the debate on the Second Stage of the Bill, stated categorically that compulsory acquisition of land on a large scale was not contemplated and was not practicable (Volume 99, column 1601, debate of 27th February, 1946). He went on to say:—
"It has always been held, and must always be held, that afforestation cannot be conducted in this country on the basis of compelling the owners of land to hand it over to the forestry service against their wishes. If the owners of land, or persons entitled to grazing rights on land, strenuously object to parting with their land or rights, there is an end to the matter."
No dissentient voice was raised in the House against this expression of basic policy and I have no reason to believe that the present Dáil would act otherwise. For myself, I made it perfectly clear, in speaking in the House just a week ago, that I would strongly oppose any arbitrary use of untrammelled powers of compulsory acquisition of land for forestry purposes and I stand four-square on that viewpoint.
So much for the existing legislation. It is as wide as any Deputy in this House could reasonably wish. As to its effectiveness, it may interest the House to know that lawyers concerned with such matters regard the relevant provision of the 1946 Forestry Act as a useful prototype for reference in the framing of new legislation affecting the acquisition of land for public purposes. It provides, save in relation to commonages, a fully effective machinery by which the Minister for Lands can acquire land which should be devoted to forestry. There is a problem in relation to the acquisition of areas held by persons with defective title and I shall refer more fully later to this point and to the question of commonages, both of which are covered by the present Bill. Before commenting in more detail on the Bill, however, I think it is desirable to refer to the broader outline of the problems of acquiring land and that, in turn, brings up issues as to the afforestation target at which we must aim.
Deputies will recall that, before the present Government first took office in 1948, progress with forestry was very slow. I was told by the Department that the shortage of rabbit netting (not axes, as one Deputy facetiously reminisced last week) had slowed down work during the war but that the real impediment before, during and after the war was the difficulty of acquiring an adequate area of land.
There were such references made in official statements issued by the Minister's Department in the year 1947.
All right. I arranged to have an augmented staff assigned to this work to ensure that acquisition would go ahead as speedily as possible. There was a general desire in the Dáil and throughout the country for a more intensive forestry drive, and I arranged, as the first step towards a more vigorous policy, that a rough survey should be made of the country as a whole to determine the areas of potential development and its approximate limit. I am deliberately describing the survey as a rough one. A more painstaking survey of areas whose owners might never part with their land would not have served any useful purpose. The survey showed the existence in the country of about 1,200,000 acres of potential forest land but it did not, and could not, prove beyond question that all of this land would yield a better national return as woodland than as pasturage. On the other hand it made inadequate allowance for afforestation of poor peat lands hitherto regarded as unplantable upon which I had arranged for the Department to initiate experimental planting with the aid of new techniques of mechanical preparation and drainage of the ground.
No precise estimate of the country's future timber needs existed. It was obvious that the then planting rate of approximately 7,500 acres per annum was inadequate and that the traditional target of 10,000 acres was also too small. I gave instructions, therefore, for an immediate stepping-up of the planting rate within the limits which the maximum possible expedition of land acquisition would permit, and taking an annual planting of 25,000 acres as the target to be aimed at. How effective the steps taken were is obvious from a perusal of acquisition and planting figures over the following few years. The productive area acquired in the three years 1946-47, 1947-48 and 1948-49 averaged 4,000 acres per annum. In 1949-50 it rose to 6,725 acres; in 1950-51 it reached 10,867 acres and by the following year it had exceeded 15,000 acres. This spectacular increase was in part attributable to the newly discovered potentialities of areas previously treated as unplantable. It permitted, however, of a steady increase in the plantable reserve coupled with an expansion of annual planting from the previous maximum of 7,500 acres to 9,372 acres in 1950-51 and 14,992 acres in 1951-52.
For the following two years the planting rate had to drop back to 12,500 acres. On returning to office last year I was happy to be able to increase the rate again to a figure of 13,900 acres and in the present year approximately 15,000 acres are being planted. Although the plantable reserve is also being gradually improved, a proper plantable reserve is essential for good nursery management and proper choice of species for planting. Reverting to the target of an annual planting programme of 25,000 acres, that figure was, as I have explained, adopted as a suitable target in the absence of precise estimation of future timber requirements and it represented a mathematical allowance for planting over 50 years the 1,200,000 acre figure derived from the rough plantable land survey—itself a figure with considerable conflicting margins of error.
To enable the position to be studied more carefully I arranged in February, 1950, to secure the services of Mr. D. Roy Cameron from F.A.O. to check generally the conclusions derived from the survey and to advise on future forest policy. Mr. Cameron furnished his report in February, 1951, and it was presented to this House later that year. I need not recapitulate his various recommendations here but his main conclusions were that Ireland's consumption of commercial timber might be expected to rise to at most 50 Petrograd standards per 1,000 of population if timber were plentifully available from home sources, and that even if population increased by 50 per cent. not more than 200,000 standards per annum would be required. He reckoned that 325 cubic feet quarter girth of standing timber would be required to produce one standard, and that an average annual yield of 69 cubic feet quarter girth per acre might be anticipated.
From this he derived an estimate of 940,000 acres as the productive area required to maintain a supply of 200,000 standards per annum but he recommended that only 500,000 acres of commercial forest should be laid down on the basis of producing within the country only half of the possible national requirements. In this, Mr. Cameron was following the line adopted in other timber-hungry countries. Great Britain, for example, has a forestry target designed to meet only one-third of the estimated annual timber requirements from home sources. While recommending, however, this limitation of a commercial forestry objective to 500,000 acres, he suggested that an additional acreage— vaguely assumed to be of like extent— might be devoted to forestry on an uneconomic basis as a means of providing employment. For this secondary programme, Mr. Cameron had in mind land not likely to produce timber of commercial quality; its produce would be directed towards wood-pulp, pit-props, etc.
Now, let us analyse Mr. Cameron's figures a little more. His allowance for a much increased per head consumption of timber is very generous but I would not quarrel with it. Future population trend is very difficult to estimate but the findings of the Commission on Emigration in regard to future population trend afford little ground for anticipating an increase of 50 per cent. in half a century. The commission referred to the "degree of optimism involved in an expectation of a population of 3,500,000 to 4,000,000 in 30 to 40 years' time" and clearly saw little prospect of any such spectacular increase. For our purposes it is not unreasonable to base present calculations on present population, especially where a generous allowance is being made for an increase in consumption per head of population. That would mean planning against a future annual consumption of not more than 150,000 standards of commercial timber as against the figure of 200,000 standards assumed by Mr. Cameron.
Turning now to the formulae by reference to which Mr. Cameron estimated the forest acreage required to supply any given consumption of commercial timber, his estimate that 325 cubic feet quarter girth of standing timber would be required to produce one standard is believed to be cautious but may be accepted as a safe figure. His estimate of average annual yield per acre at 69 cubic feet quarter girth is, however, open to question. On the basis of calculations made recently in relation to the admixture of land qualities now being planted and including an appreciable proportion of poor quality land, it is reckoned, on the most up-to-date yield data available, that an average yield of about 84 cubic feet per annum may be expected. The total forest acreage required to meet in full future potential commercial timber consumption would thus be 580,000 acres or, say, 600,000 acres. That ultimate objective would call for the planting, on a 50 year rotation, of only 12,000 acres a year.
These are cold realistic figures and their significance cannot be brushed aside by any frenzied and delirious screaming for more, more, more planting to pull up for our present grossly inadequate timber supplies. It is 50 years now since a national forest undertaking was launched in this country. If in the first years of that undertaking it had been possible to plant at the present rate, we would now be self-sufficient in commercial timber. Such was not the case, however, and we cannot now make it so, no matter how much we talk about it. Neither can the Forestry Division of to-day, nor the Minister for Lands with the aid of all the Deputies in this House, make the trees which we are now planting mature in less than 50 years by planting two or three trees for each one needed. We will not be self-sufficient in timber in 25, 30 or 40 years' time and, unless someone can find a magic formula for making trees grow faster than nature intended them to grow, that fact cannot be altered to-day.
We are now planting at a rate sufficient to meet our commercial timber needs in 45 to 50 years' time and there is nothing more we can do on that front except to ensure that the Forestry Division is given a proper opportunity to maintain and develop the plantations in the proper way. I want to say on that score that when I first took office as Minister for Lands, I did not fully appreciate the extent to which a rapid increase in fresh planting could detract attention from the requirements of the existing plantations. That fact did not become apparent until 1951 and the Minister who took over from me in that year would have had my full support when he announced to this House in introducing the Forestry Estimate for 1952-53—Volume 132, columns 1966-1968, debate of 1st July, 1952—that it would be necessary to reduce the planting rate for that year to 12,500 acres in order to make sure that arrears of work in the existing plantations received attention. We cannot quarrel with him for that as every Deputy must realise that the care of existing plantations must take precedence over fresh planting. In the years since 1952-53 much headway has been made with the clearance of the arrears of forest management. Grass-cleaning, replacement of failures and other similar work in the very young plantations has been put on a proper footing. Thining of the older plantations which only became an extensive problem about ten years ago and which had not at any time since then received adequate attention has been tackled energetically; by way of illustration, 9,000 acres a year are now being thinned compared with about 3,000 acres a year in the five years ended 1950.
Road construction which had also been neglected is being pushed ahead at a rate ten times that of a few years ago. The marketing of produce from the thinning of plantations has been put on a more business-like and efficient basis and increased revenue is being secured from this source. In the current year, the Forestry Division hopes to be able to exceed the Vote allowance for Appropriations-in-Aid from sales of timber by some £40,000 or 30 per cent., despite a decreasing availability of mature timber from old woodlands. Alongside all this progress in other fields, the planting rate has again been pushed up to 15,000 acres for this year. I do not want to take all the credit for this—not do I think it is due entirely to my predecessor. Much of it, in truth, is due to the civil servants who have been the butt of unjust and ignorant criticism by people who profess to think that the Forestry Division is stultified by senior civil servants bedecked with red tape.
Before passing from this issue of commercial forestry production it may be of interest to the House to know that Ireland at the moment has 104 acres under timber for every 1,000 of population whereas the United Kingdom—with much less problems of land acquisition for forestry purposes—has only 76 acres per 1,000 of population. Our present planting rate will give us 255 acres per 1,000 of population whereas the United Kingdom's target is 98 acres per 1,000 of population although the United Kingdom as a highly industrialised country will always have a much higher timber consumption per head of population than this country. Actual accomplishment in the United Kingdom at the moment is only 55 per cent. of the target of annual planting on which the above comparison is based.
Turning now to the question of planting poor land with a view to the production of inferior timber suitable for wood-pulp and similar uses, the secondary (or social) forestry programme which Mr. Cameron recommended, I am anxious to see this developed as rapidly as possible, especially in view of the employment prospect it affords in western counties, but the proposition is a very complex problem to which we are still learning some of the answers. The whole question is bound up with the experimental planting on virgin bog sites on which the Forestry Division has been engaged since 1950. Experimentation has gone ahead steadily since that year but it is still too soon to make a proper assessment of even the earlier experiments, although, so far, we are very pleased with results. In the meantime we are learning much in regard to the potentialities of these planting sites and the experience is being ploughed back into fresh experiments. For example, this year the technical experts are swinging over to a wider use of the more valuable sitka spruce on site types which four or five years ago were regarded as suited only to the less desirable contorta pine. In this way forestry can be relied upon to bring a lasting benefit to the economy of the congested districts and other underdeveloped areas in western counties whereas a madcap rush to plant the blanket bog of the western seaboard would assuredly end in dismal failure. It may be another five or ten years before we can get beyond the experimental stage in this work and fix a definite annual target.
In the intervening years we will also have secured a clearer picture on the relevant—and interrelated—issues of market potential for wood pulp and supplies of pulp timber from thinnings out of commercial stands. In the meantime it may be assumed that each year's planting—in so far as it exceeds the 12,000-acre minimum for commercial timber which I have mentioned— includes some margin towards production purely for pulp and similar purposes and that margin will grow steadily if we are able to continue to step up the planting rate. Rapid growth is, however, neither feasible nor desirable. It is not feasible because it is not possible to increase appreciably the existing intake of land of types which the experts now regard as plantable and it is not desirable in so far as it could only be accomplished by the excessive haste which any right-thinking man must condemn. The issue here is simple and straightforward: whether or not to overrule the technical experts who urge caution in developing this new field of work. I have not been prepared to overrule technical opinions on such matters and I think my view will be shared by the vast majority of this House.
We must plan, therefore, for a future planting rate rising steadily from the present annual figure of 15,000 acres to an ultimate target which must for the present remain open to further deliberation but which may be assumed to be in the region of 25,000 acres. Our immediate problems are to maintain the present rate of acquisition of land and to expand it. If we can secure a more rapid expansion, all to the good; thereby the plantable reserve position could be improved with benefits in forest management, employment stabilisation, etc., but a spectacular rise in the rate of acquisition over the next few years is not by any means essential since experimental work will be still in progress for some years to come. The acquisition of an additional 15,000 acres —or, including the unplantable land which has to be purchased with plantable land, a total of as much as 17,500 or 20,000 acres—each year is no easy task. A learned friend of mine recently suggested in an after-dinner speech— I scarcely dare to hope that he was wrongly reported in the newspapers— that Bord na Móna would be better able to acquire land for forestry purposes than is the Forestry Division. I am sure my learned if somewhat misguided friend would be surprised to find that Bord na Móna has purchased less than £100,000 worth of land in the whole period of its existence—a figure which the Forestry Division exceeds in a single year. It may appear that Bord na Móna can secure land with greater facility—by using compulsory powers —but Bord na Móna's work involves the development of areas which have no agricultural value. There can be no question in that case of competition of user interests and the only creatures displaced by the board's activities are the bog snipe. With forestry it is a vastly different question. There is scarcely a single acre in this country capable of development for forestry which has not some value for agricultural purposes. Some of it may not have a high agricultural value but it is at least contributing to the economy of mountain and similar farms by providing inferior but extensive grazing possibilities as an adjunct to more effective husbandry on limited areas. Here it is a question of displacing men and families. Forestry development of the marginal land types can ultimately provide a more lucrative addition to the income of the households living on these small farms than poor grazing, but this new era cannot be achieved overnight.
The work of acquisition is a painstaking task. Rarely can large tracts be secured in one deal and new forest properties have to be built up by the gradual purchase of comparatively small areas. As many as 250 individual deals may have to be put through in a single year to maintain the present acquisition rate and, as Deputies will appreciate, each of these involves much work and painstaking negotiation before a bargain is struck and the lawyers get down to title questions. It is important, therefore, that none of these acquisitions should fall through because of the discovery of some flaw in title thus rendering useless all the work devoted to these cases, but as the law stands to-day that is inevitable. No matter how desirable it may be to secure the devotion of a particular block of land to forestry purposes, the State cannot be expected to acquire the area and spend considerable sums of money on its forestry development if the title of the holder is not secure. To do so would be to risk a very heavy financial loss to the community. The answer to this problem is provided in the Bill now before the House.
The other problem which must be solved if forestry is to keep forging ahead is that of commonages. The difficulty of acquiring commonage areas has only become important in the past few years since commonage ownership of areas which might be considered for afforestation is more commonly met in the West than elsewhere in the country and the forest potentialities of these areas is becoming more obvious with the progress of the experimental work on poor site-types to which I have already referred. A secondary forest policy such as I have described will call for extensive acquisition of commonage areas in western counties and some effective means of dealing with the special problems of these areas is essential. Here, again, the Bill provides the answer. It does so in a clean, straightforward manner which will leave the Department's position and the position of the various common holders clear and indisputable and it achieves this end without resorting to compulsion, in the real sense, against anyone. Deputies would, I know, like to have some definite ideas as to the additional acreage which the Bill will enable us to acquire. I would be guessing in the dark if I were to attempt such an estimate. People with defective title have hitherto been reluctant to offer their land because they knew, from the experience of their neighbours, that the Forestry Division needed a sound title. Now they will be able to offer. Many of these people are in the West, and it is in the West, therefore, that most benefit will accure from this particular provision in the Bill. The commonage question is also mainly a western one and, since commonage possibilities for forestry have only been emerging in the last two or three years with the introduction of new techniques, estimation of the ultimate acreage likely to be involved is difficult. It may run into hundreds of thousands of acres.
For my part I am satisfied that this measure will solve the two problems which must be faced if the Forestry Division is to continue to carry on the excellent job of work of which I, as Minister, am proud. I am happy to commended the Bill to the House.
I am one of those who can plead to a great deal of disappointment in the consideration of this measure and of the Minister's opening remarks, because I fear the Minister led the House and the country to expect a great deal more than the Bill, in fact, is likely to achieve. It is stated that this is a Bill to facilitate the acquisition of land for the purpose of the Forestry Act, 1946, and, of course, a technical reason is given for the title assuming such a wide range; but, in fact, what we have to consider is what exactly is likely to be achieved under this legislation, assuming that it passes and that it works satisfactorily and effectively.
The Minister has not attempted to give any indication of the acreage of land that he thinks might possibly come in. Indeed, it would be difficult for him to give an exact estimate, but I think the House would like to know whether the measure is, in fact, based on, let us say, the personal experience of the Minister in dealing with certain commonages in Mayo, or on a wider consideration of the problem of commonages generally in the congested districts. I take it that it is designed to deal with the problem of commonages and grazing rights in the western areas, but I would like to know from the Minister whether he can give the House more definite information as to the possible extent of these areas, whether they occur in the congested districts, whether there are any of them in counties like Wicklow, along the Galtee ranges or the Slieve Bloom, or in the other main forestry areas.
If I might interrupt, commonages exist all over the country. There is scarcely a county without its commonages and there is scarcely a county in which the problem did not hold up forestry.
There are plenty in West Cork.
Because of the mountainous nature of the whole of the West of Ireland, from Donegal to West Cork, it must be admitted that commonages are more plentiful there.
There are, however, no counties without their share of them.
The Minister waxed very eloquent—I do not know why— when he was dealing with the motion we had down on this matter in relation to his hostility to the idea of compulsory acquisition.
"I made it perfectly clear," he says, "in speaking in the House just a week ago, that I would strongly oppose any arbitrary use of untrammelled powers of compulsory acquisition of land for forestry purpose and I stand four-square on that viewpoint."
I do not know whether there is any considerable body of opinion in the country which would favour the arbitrary use of untrammelled powers. It is assumed, if we are dealing with the question of compulsory powers, that they will be used in a legal fashion and that they will have the sanction of the Legislature behind them, that the people concerned will have appeal to the courts and, so long as forestry continues to be a subject of discussion here, so long as the Minister and, through him, the Government are directly responsible and we have frequent opportunities of dealing with afforestation problems, as we have now, it seems very unlikely, I think that we will have any arbitrary action.
The Agricultural Act of 1947 passed by the British Parliament after the war enabled the British Minister not alone to give orders to the farmers how they should carry on their farming operations in accordance with the principles of good husbandry and good estate management but it enabled them to lay down instructions that the farms should be properly equipped so as to enable proper production and proper results to be maintained. It went on to state that the Minister should actually take possession of these lands. I do not know whether there have been many cases since the war but, during the war at any rate, we know that in the neighbouring country people were dispossessed for failure to maintain their lettings properly.
I think that was changed after Sir Thomas Dugdale's forced resignation as Minister.
I do not know. While the Act has a certain punitive side, it has also the valuable assurance to the agricultural industry that, so long as it is in force, the provisions for the statutory reviews of agricultural prices and for seeing that the farmers will get proper incentives and a proper return for the produce that they get from their land, will represent the other side of the picture. Therefore, I take it that whatever the penalties may be in the Act, so long as it contains the other provisions which guarantee to the farming community a fair price and statutory reviews, and so on, for their products, they are not likely to quarrel with it.
What happened when Deputy Smith was going to fill the fields with inspectors and break down the ditches? Did he not get a good answer?
That does not arise on this Bill.
I think I recollect the present Minister for Agriculture telling the farmers down in the Midlands he was not going to tolerate the 11months' system. I have not his exact words here but perhaps Deputy Collins will challenge me on that. We know that lands are not being utilised to the best advantage either in the national interest or even in the interest of the people to whom they belong. We have the Land Commission with its compulsory powers of acquisition and I think it is an advantage—I stated this frequently and intend to continue to state it—to the administration of forestry in this State that the Forestry Branch is working in close co-operation with the Irish Land Commission.
As the Minister has pointed out, the Land Commission have powers of compulsory acquisition. They have a good deal of experience and knowledge, particularly of conditions in the western congested areas as well as in the rest of the country. The staff of the Land Commission have a better knowledge of rural land problems—it would be strange if they had not—and of the problems of the acquisition and the price of land in particular, than any other body of men in this country. If a separate board or commission were set up independent of this Dáil— because that is what it amounts to— it would mean that the opportunities we have here for discussion on occasions of this kind or on the annual Estimates would no longer present themselves. Presumably, we would be told, as in the case of C.I.E., the E.S.B., and Bord na Móna, that the matter of the determination of policy and certainly the day-to-day administration and policy are matters for the directors and those in charge of these particular boards.
It is an advantage to the House that the Minister should be responsible here and that he must answer for the doings or misdoings of the Forestry Branch and the staff of that branch. Apart from that, it is surely an advantage that we have the co-operation and the goodwill of the Irish Land Commissioners in facilitating the Forestry Branch wherever they can, and that, wherever they find that there are lands they do not require, which are on their hands and which they do not require for allotment to congests or others, they are prepared to transfer that land to the Forestry Branch.
I do not know what would replace that if we have a new organisation. If forestry progresses and if it is intended that there should be a separate Ministry for forestry, that is perhaps understandable. But if that should happen the question will arise why these two separate branches of the Department of Lands which are at present working in close co-operation could not be even more closely integrated in the future under the Minister for Lands, whether he be called Minister for Lands or Minister for Forests and Lands, if that title is preferred.
It is stated that the 1946 Act, apart from the question of commonages, provides a fully effective machinery for the acquisition of land, and the Minister proposes to utilise that machinery. I do not know what the phraseology in the explanatory memorandum may be. Granted that the purposes for which the Irish Land Commission may take land compulsorily are different from the purposes which the Forestry Act has in mind. But it seems to me perhaps a pious expression of opinion, perhaps a rather sanctimonious type of declaration or window-dressing, to say that in the matter of defective title it is important that the sanctity of property rights under the Constitution should be fully preserved. The sanctity of the rights of those who have only defective titles or no titles at all is a conception that, I must say, is rather beyond me because, from the legal point of view, except for the right that occupation over a period of years gives, possibly they have no legal rights whatever. They may have just squatters' rights. But if the State is interfering in other matters, such as acquisition of land for housing and roads, and it is important that the sanctity of property rights under the Constitution should be fully preserved, where do those whose lands are being taken over for labourers' cottages, and so on, stand? After all, it is admitted that this type of land is inferior and presumably the Minister or his officer will not seek to acquire it unless they are more or less satisfied that it has no agricultural potential.
The Minister has given us very definite examples of the type of case he has in mind. On the motion which we had in the House recently the Minister stated at column 907, Volume 153 of the Official Debates of 16th November, 1955:—
"Say, for instance, that we have 18 shareholders in the common, and there are 15 or 16 of these who are willing to sell. What I propose to do is to buy these out. I have taken the power to partition the common and leave the other two or three there. If they find themselves left there with their own little bit, they will soon come round all right."
They may come round all right but if they are coming round to meet the Minister in an agreeable frame of mind, that is all right. But they may come round in an entirely different frame of mind and I want to ask the question whether under Sections 4 and 5, if the Minister is using his powers for the afforestation of commonages and the offering of alternative pieces to those who have a share in the commonage or in the grazing rights, what proof have we that at the end of the offer, the Minister will not be in precisely the same position he was in at the beginning, that is to say, that the objecting owner will refuse to take either the Minister's compensation or the alternative piece that is offered? We know that owners of commonage, particularly if they feel that the Minister is interested in their property, may have very fanciful views as to the value of their land. They may feel that there is some precious substance underneath it and that its potential value is much greater than the forestry people consider it to be. I do not know how, in the long run, it will enable the forestry work to be carried on if, as the explanatory memorandum issued with the Bill states:—
"...where land is subject to common grazing rights and one (or more) of the holders of these rights is unwilling to lose his right, his case can be met by substituting for the existing easement a new easement by way of a sole right to graze a limited area of the land proportionate to his previous share in the grazing rights over the whole of the land. The Minister will become the owner in fee simple of the whole of the land, but the area which he can develop for forestry purposes will be limited so as to meet the reasonable requirements of any of the previous holders of grazing rights who are unwilling to part with their rights."
I do not know what the reasonable requirements will be. Perhaps the Minister feels that the Land Commission, the Appeal Tribunal or the courts will decide that. While it may be true that commonages are not so valuable as to make it likely that the owners will take the cases to court and fight the Minister there, in the case of grazing rights I have experience of one particular case and I know that these rights may be very valuable to the people concerned. They may have a genuine difference of opinion with the Minister and they may, in fact, not wish under any circumstances or for any compensation that may be offered or having regard to any alternative, to give up their portion. I wonder how, in that case, the Minister will be able to proceed with the work of afforestation.
May I interrupt the Deputy, by way of explanation? In the case of the grazing rights, I can see the Deputy's difficulty. A, let us say, owns the fee simple while B, C, D, E and F and so on have grazing rights there under some of these tenancies. What I propose to do is to acquire the fee simple of the whole area from the former owner and then to partition the grazing right and give the sole grazing right of a specified small area, to be specified by the Land Commissioners, in a particular area. But in the new case the Minister will own the fee simple of the whole area and the person who had former grazing rights over the whole area will have his grazing right condensed into a small area. It will not deprive him of any of his former latitude. It is a ticklesome question.
Of course, we do not know what the attitude will be but, judging by the trouble that the Land Commission, with all its experience and with all the knowledge of its inspectors, has had in dealing with tenants, in trying to get their consent to rearrangement schemes, I think there will be some difficulty. The Minister has even more experience of that matter than I have. He knows a great deal about it. I wonder at what stage there will be any guarantee that you will get the consent or goodwill of these people.
Would the Deputy mind if I asked the Minister a question that would clear up the matter that he raised? Does the Minister's last answer mean that instead of a person having a right in commonage over an area he would have exclusive enjoyment of a limited area proportionate to what he had before?
That is true of both the two kinds of title difficulties that we are up against—commonage and grazing.
He would have exclusive enjoyment?
He would have sole right.
That would be only in a case where he had the right in fee simple originally.
I have explained the other type of case.
That is what I was trying to clear up. The Minister has said that he will acquire the fee simple. Say there were 12 tenants enjoying commonage grazing rights over the area. You will acquire the fee simple. Does it mean, in the final analysis, that, if ten of these 12 consent to the lands being used for forestry, the remaining two will have a one-twelfth proportion of the general area, each one a divided portion for exclusive enjoyment?
Yes. In the case of the two, if they want it separate, if they want each of their shares marked out, they can have that or, if they want joint rights over the small portion, they can have it.
In fee simple?
No. In the grazing rights. The Minister owns the fee simple.
Deputy Derrig is in possession and should be allowed to proceed.
I was not trying to interrupt the Deputy. I was only trying to clear up the point.
I quite realise that there has to be an experimental period during which the Department gains the necessary experience. I am glad that the experiment is being started. The House will give the Minister its sympathy in undertaking the experiment. Our hope is that he will secure the co-operation of the owners concerned and of all Deputies. I hope that, after a year or two, it will not be found that it has not been possible to achieve the advance that we now anticipate. I hope that in a year or two we shall have some definite information. I trust that particular account will be kept of the proceedings under this Bill and that the House will be kept au fait with the developments.
The Minister referred to the question of land acquisition in general. He stated recently that we had 50,000 acres of plantable reserve. If we are acquiring at the rate of 20,000 and planting 15,000, aiming at an increase in that yearly programme of up to 20,000 acres, it seems to me that, if one were serious about extending the planting programme, one would need, not 50,000 acres in hand, but 100,000 acres.
Although the minimum that has been laid down by the best forestry experts is near to the equivalent of a three years' planting programme, that is up to 60,000 acres, the fact that we have about 170 plantations widely scattered throughout the country, a great number of which have no land coming in, should make us realise that we are very far away indeed from the ideal Mr. Cameron spoke of when he referred to the building up of blocks of 3,000 or 4,000 acres. Unless we can build up a reserve of about 100,000 acres and maintain that figure it would be quite impossible to maintain the ordinary programme of 20,000 or 25,000 acres a year.
The Minister has referred to mechanisation and it is no harm to bear that in mind in connection with Mr. Cameron's statement. He referred to the difficulty of dealing with the very considerable areas which contained tracts of land of little or no agricultural value. Then he went on to say:—
"There are many tens of thousands of acres, particularly in the western part of Ireland which are definitely sub-marginal to any form of agriculture. The local population must either be assisted to emigrate or to eke out a hard existence by contributions from the general taxpayer in one form or another.
Paragraph 55. Forestry seems to provide an answer to this unfortunate situation. The development of modern mechanised planting techniques gives promise of the establishment of forests on lands on which formerly trees could not be made to grow.
Paragraph 56. It must be admitted that the forests thus established will be of comparatively low productive capacity and cannot be expected to produce forest products as a profitable commercial operation if cumulative interest charges on capital investment were taken into calculation. Nevertheless the establishment of such forests would well serve the national interest. They might not produce much sawlog material but they would produce pit-props in quantity, suitable for export to the United Kingdom, and large volumes of roundwood which could be manufactured into fibreboard or chemical wood derivatives."
In fact, if we allow for the fact that about 5,000 acres may be planted by mechanical means, it does not mean that we have advanced to any tremendous degree on the ordinary planting programme. If, in the future, we are going to be driven more and more into these bog lands which are totally worthless from the agricultural point of view, and about whose capacity to produce commercial timber Mr. Cameron has no doubt as he feels that we cannot get commercial timber from these areas, we will have to be dependent on the experience of the past two years.
At one point the Minister seemed to lead us into the belief that sitka spruce might be grown in areas where hitherto only the contorta pine has been grown. The House should be made aware of the results of those experiments as soon as possible and also of the results in areas such as Cloosh and Nephin where we are depending on these mechanical methods.
It was also stated, and I know the opinion was held when I was in the Department, that the yield of timber would be much greater than Mr. Cameron seemed to indicate. It was also a fact that even poor quality timber, like the contorta pine, can be used for commercial purposes which would render it more profitable than the high class timber which can only be produced on good land.
I think that those who are interested in the development of forestry will question the statement of the Minister —he would have questioned it himself, in former years—when he states "There is nothing more we can do on that front" and that we are getting sufficient to meet our commercial timber needs. He states that nothing more can be done on that front except to ensure that the Forestry Division is given a proper opportunity to maintain and develop the plantations in a big way. That seems to me to mean that we are not to expect a great deal from the present Bill. It does not mean that we can expect substantial additions to the annual intake of land. Naturally I agree with the Minister that the care of existing plantations should take precedence over fresh planting.
Unless we are in a position to guarantee fairly continuous employment and unless we have in view the acquisition of substantial blocks of land in these congested areas, we are not going to get anywhere by having a programme of planting a few hundred acres of land for two, three, four, or five years and then having to leave the whole thing there. Naturally there is a case to be made for the devising of some scheme by which the workers of a body such as Bord na Móna could work in with the Forestry Division. That would help to solve the problem of giving employment for the whole year round as I understand such employment is being given on the Gowlaun Bog in County Galway. Those who advocate that forestry should be transferred to Bord na Móna feel strongly that the board would be able, if it had its share in the work of afforestation, to ensure work for the whole year round for its workers.
On the other hand, as I have said already, there are advantages which, in my view, are more than illusory, from having the present arrangement under which the Minister and the branch are working in close co-operation with the Land Commission. I wanted to say that, with the mechanisation which goes on in these areas of very poor wet land, the amount of improvement work is not considerable unless you get very large areas together and it was for that reason that I urged the Minister again to consider scheduling these areas which I think even the most finatical expert in the Department of Agriculture will not claim can have any real potential agricultural value.
I do not know why these areas could not be specifically scheduled or why our attention could not be directed to trying to build up a comparatively large area of forest in these mountain areas. I think that it would be better than pretending—because that is all it amounts to—that we can have substantial areas put under trees in the Midlands or in the good agricultural areas in the country. Would it not be better to face the situation that you will not be able to maintain a large planting programme unless you have in sight the acquisition of very large areas? Even when you have acquired these large areas, as I stated on the last occasion on which I spoke on the subject, I am sure the experts, even with the best will and anxiety in the world, will announce that great portions of these large tracts, if they were acquired to-morrow, would be unplantable because of exposure.
I do not think I have very much more to say except to ask what the basis of compensation will be. I presume compensation for these lands— assuming again that the proposal will result in the securing of large areas which otherwise might not be obtained for forestry—will be in accordance with the ordinary range of prices in operation at the moment. I have no objection whatever to paying proper compensation because I realise fully that the people with whom we shall be dealing should not be treated in a skimpy or ungenerous manner. On the other hand, I am aware of the fact that for many years past the Land Commission have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds in the settling and improvement of these very holdings, and when these acquisition proposals come up it is often seen that the amount that is paid is out of all proportion to the annuity or the value the Land Commission would place upon the particular area.
As I have said, I have no objection to the tenants being treated decently and even generously but I think that the Minister ought to adhere to a regular range of prices fixed after due consideration and that we should not be driven up by local agitation or such talk as: "If you had given another pound you would have got that land." The point is that in Great Britain, where they have been able to plant up to 70,000 acres, and they now find they cannot get any more land, they were able to get the land for a fraction of what we pay. The Minister will be able to correct me if necessary, but my recollection, from what I have read on the subject from forestry reports, is that they were able to get land in Great Britain for a few pounds an acre. We are prepared to go very much higher than that but we cannot go into the field in competition with those who believe they can utilise the land for agricultural purposes. We shall have to make up our minds definitely that it is only land that cannot be used for agricultural purposes and which has no agricultural value we will acquire.
Before I start I think it would be no harm to take one of the points made by Deputy Derrig straight away. With the bulk of what he said. I do not think anybody on this side could disagree, but he did say, or I understood him to say quite straightly, that this Bill was of no great significance. As I understand it, that is not true at all. The present Bill was not an easy Bill to draft, as will be apparent to anybody who reads the memorandum, and I think the Minister is to be complimented on getting it into the House so soon. As regards the extra quantity of land which will become available due to this Bill, I understand it is impossible to be definite, but my belief is that it will be somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 acres a year.
The present purchases amount to about 18,000 acres a year. The increase may be as high as from 60 per cent. to 70 per cent. and the increase is likely to be as high in the coming year as 50 per cent. I think it is proper that that particular comment should be made straight away. This is an important Bill and it is no use trying to befog it by a lot of verbiage. The present Government, and the Minister particularly, can take a just pride in the amount of money which is now being made available for forestry. I think there are other persons on this side of the House who can also claim that the great development of forestry work in this country is in part due to their efforts. About ten years ago the amount of money in the Forestry Vote was £300,000.
It can be urged that these were not propitious times, but in fact the £300,000 of ten years ago has become £1,750,000 in the current year. I am glad to say that the receipts this year are also showing an upward trend. The Minister, I understand, expects to get £40,000 to £50,000 more than he expected when the Estimate was framed, and I think that is a fine tribute to the Forestry Division for the effort they have made in getting in that extra money. It shows that perhaps in a much shorter period we can be optimistic enough to believe that the forestry work will show itself to be of great value to the country. I am not, and nobody would be, so naive as to believe that in ten years' time the work will be paying for itself, but I do believe that thinnings and the definitely increased quantities of other timbers which will become available will provide not only building and packing materials but also the raw materials for such industries as paper making and wallboard as well as for the manufacture of commodities for export.
I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary from what source this £40,000 extra revenue came.
It came, Deputy, from the sales of timber. In other words, the Forestry Division has made a special effort to get in more money to help the Minister for Finance by developing sales and by doing more thinning work in the areas already planted than they had hoped.
Thinning, I take it, from areas planted in the last ten or 15 years?
Thinnings have gone up from 3,000 to 9,000 acres.
What particular purpose was the timber used for?
We cannot have a debate carried on in this fashion. The Parliamentary Secretary must be allowed to speak.
I am purely interested in the fact that already the forestry programme is bringing better results than we had expected. That is the only point I was making.
I would like to know what purpose the timber was used for?
I saw some of it being put on boats at Dún Laoghaire. The last time I was passing by Dún Laoghaire Harbour I saw a large consignment on the west quary and I take it that that is one of the sources of revenue—the sale of pit-props. Other Deputies may be aware that there has been an increase in the use of these thinnings for the production of wood pulp here at home, for use by the Waterford paper and board factory. These are all different parts of the receipts.
I think that the Minister may also be congratulated—and I think everybody would agree—on the increased acreage which he hopes to plant this year. It is, I think, an increase of 10 per cent. It might not be regarded as a large increase but it is a definite increase. If this additional land comes in in the coming year, we would all hope that the figure of 20,000 which he has mentioned would be achieved within the next couple of years. I understand there is a ratio between the total amount of land in the machine, the total amount of plantable land, and the amount you can plant in any one year, and that until you build up the total amount of land you have, it is not possible to plant a great deal more than one is planting already. I think the Minister may be congratulated on that aspect of it. I think he is also to be congratulated for this development which occurred in 1950 when he was in office—this development of planting in the West. That is a development which all sides of the House would approve most heartily.
I would like to see, for example, part of the money—that is a personal view I hold—in the improvement subhead of the Land Commission Vote, or a large part of it diverted to forestry. I do not believe that the problems of the West—although Deputies from the West are continually suggesting this here—can be solved in any way by land division. I do not believe that further land division in this country can make any worthwhile contribution to the problems of the West. I think forestry has far greater possibilities and I would like to see then, as Deputy Derrig suggested, the Ministry for Lands becoming the Ministry for Lands and Forestry. That would certainly appeal to me very much. For example, at present you could not divert the entire improvement sub—head expenditure of the Land Commission Vote to forestry, but if you diverted £500,000, it would provide, I believe, employment for another 2,000 people, a very substantial contribution to the unemployment problem and a contribution which I think would be well worthwhile. It would be very desirable, I think, that the effort involved in trying to improve the situation by further exploitation of land division should be diverted to forestry as being preferable by far.
There has been some criticism in recent years to the effect that although we hear a lot about forestry there is not much extension of it yet. There is certainly evidence of it in counties like Wicklow but I am also inclined to think that in a few years' time when the trees grow up so that they will be visible over the countryside it will be more noticeable to everybody. It takes from five to six years for young trees to come to any size. Already the areas that were planted in 1949 and 1950 are becoming visible but other areas are not so easily seen. I would hope that everybody will recognise the effort that has been made in a few years' time when the trees become quite visible in other parts of the country besides Wicklow.
It seemed to me that Deputy Derrig was not quite satisfied about some aspects of the programme. He was satisfied, it seemed, that the Minister was planning as great an area as he could. I am inclined to think that it may be possible gradually as improved methods come about—as they have already come about—to regard more and more land as plantable and when that time comes along—I understand at present there are in the machine about 300,000 acres altogether of which 200,000 acres are already wooded— more and more of the other 100,000 acres could be planted, so that you would increase greatly the total quantity of land available for planting in the machine.
It is true—and both the Minister and Deputy Derrig seem to take it for granted—that a period of 50 years is required before timber comes to maturity. I think we are sometimes inclined to pay too much attention to that figure. There are continuous receipts from forestry year after year from the time that the trees become ten or 15 years old. There are two or three thinnings before maturity and finally we have the mature crop of timber which is, of course, the most valuable of all. I do not think anybody could suggest that the money which has been put into timber already and into the planting of trees already in this country is not showing us a very remarkable return, and for that reason everybody on this side of the House would like to extend the area under forestry as rapidly as possible.
With the various calculations that have been made I am not in any position either to agree or to disagree but I would like to enter one caveat about one particular figure that was contained in the suggestion which the Minister made, and which Deputy Derrig also made, about the quantity of land which is under afforestation in Britain relative to the population. The difficulty about making such a comparison is that the area of arable land in England—20,000,000 acres—represents only some two-fifths of an acre per head of the population whereas here we have four acres of arable land per person in the population. It would be easy to push the comparison between this country and Britain too far. Britain is an industrial country which gets its timber mainly by exporting industrial goods; we have practically no option but to try to create a situation in which we will get the bulk of our own timber here at home. I think if we adopt the steps necessary to bring into operation as quickly as possible the programme of 25,000 acres a year, we may achieve the 20,000 acres programme which looks like being possible with the amount of land we have on hands.
The Minister on a previous occasion was able, within a year or two, to create a situation in which the total planted was 15,000 acres. That was in 1951-52. The immediate post-war plan of the Fianna Fáil Government was for 10,000 acres per year. Now it has been suggested on more than one occasion here that that progress gave rise to certain difficulties of its own. These were difficulties about organising, thinnings and so on, and I have often thought that these particular difficulties are not incapable of solution. There are many ways in which they can be dealt with. From the point of view of the interests of the country as a whole, it is desirable that the maximum area should be planted.
I should add one special reason why afforestation should be pressed forward. The present intention is to complete the rural electrification programme in 1959. When that programme is completed, those who are now employed on that scheme will have to be provided with alternative work. The same applies to the housing programme, though it may become necessary to provide houses for the farming community because that is one section of our community which has not received as much attention as those living in the urban areas or the agricultural worker has received. But, even if one plans to improve housing for the farming community, there are bound to be large numbers of building operatives disemployed at some time in the future. Likewise, those engaged on rural electrification will be disemployed and there does not seem to be any alternative employment except forestry. It may be said that we could embark on a policy of land division, but I have already indicated that I do not agree with such a policy. Only in forestry, therefore, will we be able to provide employment of a continuous nature for those who become disemployed on building and rural electrification.
At the moment, there are 5,000 employed on forestry. With the passage of time, forestry operations tend to become more continuous throughout the year, as distinct from the initial stages during which no planting could be done during the winter months. Forestry operations are quite different now. I have no knowledge of the technical end of this matter, but I was impressed last spring to see near Mount Brandon in Kerry what was obviously an immense return from a comparatively small wood which had been thinned out. From the appearance of the trees it was obviously only 15 to 20 years old, but I was astonished at the obvious wealth produced there, new wealth for the country. That is why we on this side of the House hope that, unless matters become adverse in the financial world, and we trust they will not, more and more money will be put into forestry in the coming year. That is why I welcome this Bill. I believe it is a much more important Bill than the chief speaker for the Opposition has indicated.
I, too, welcome this Bill. This Bill is intended to facilitate the acquisition of land for forestry purposes and to get over certain difficulties which have been advanced from time to time as one of the reasons why progress in forestry was not as rapid as it should be. The Bill deals exclusively with the question of the purchase of land and, as such, I am sure it will be readily accepted by the House.
There are a number of suggestions of a technical nature which might possibly be better made on the Committee Stage but I am afraid that the Minister and his advisers have acted extremely unwisely in preparing the script because the script raises the whole question of the policy of reafforestation throughout the country. I think that was unwise from the point of view of the Bill itself. I think it was unwise politically. I think it was unwise for the Minister personally. A Bill of this kind should be discussed on its merits as a piece of mechanism for the facilitation of the acquisition of land for forestry, but the Minister and his advisers have seen fit to throw in a number of other matters into the discussion. The Minister has thrown down the gauntlet; I am now going to pick it up.
We were told earlier this year—I think in March or April—that this Bill was required to overcome difficulties which the Minister was meeting in acquiring enough land for forestry purposes. The Minister and the Forestry Branch had been under a good deal of fire and criticism because of the lack of progress in the planting of trees. The ministerial answer to that was: "The lack of progress is due to the fact that we cannot get the necessary land; it is due to the fact that we have not enough machinery at our disposal to get over some of the technical difficulties in our way." At that time, everybody in this House immediately assured the Minister that he would get all the powers he required to enable him to make more rapid progress. That was early this year. We waited, and waited, and waited. There was no Bill. Finally, I became a little bit impatient and a week or so ago I let fly at the Minister. I wanted to know what was happening to the Bill.
I have to go back now a little further because of some of the comments made by the Minister in introducing this Bill, comments made from the script which, no doubt, was prepared for him. He dealt with what he termed as the unfair and malicious criticism which had been advanced in regard to the lack of progress made in connection with forestry. He referred to the fact that I—he did not mention me by name, but the comment was quite clearly intended for me—had reviewed the various excuses given over the years by the Forestry Branch for the lack of progress. Let me restate them now.
We were told, first of all, that one could not get the land. Time marched on. Land was available and the land argument ceased to be the reason put forward for the lack of progress. We were then told there were too many rabbits and the rabbits were eating the plants. We were told it was very hard to fence the land. We were told there was a lack of wire netting. On another occasion we were told there was a lack of barbed wire. On one occasion, among the commodities enumerated by the Minister's Department—not under the aegis of the present Minister, I admit—as being in short supply, thereby preventing the planting of trees, were axes. If the Minister looks up the official statements issued by his Department he will find one of those statements containing that excuse. I reviewed these things the other night in the House in order to emphasise the general urgency that was attached to forestry and expressed the hope that new measures to be introduced would now remove the last enumerated obstacle to progress, namely, the acquisition of land. We have the Bill now but the Minister in introducing it took the occasion to make a general declaration of policy in regard to forestry, a declaration of policy which indicated that neither he nor his Department had the slightest intention of stepping up the plantation rate to 25,000 acres a year which was decided back as far as 1949, a declaration of policy in which he stated that the present planting rate was quite adequate to meet our timber requirements.
Not only did he make this startling announcement but he took the occasion to criticise the report made by Mr. Cameron who was brought over here to make a survey of forestry. He proceeded to announce from the depth of his technical knowledge, no doubt, that Mr. Cameron's figures were all wrong, that he had overestimated the amount of timber that we would require and that he had overestimated the plantation rate required. I am sure the House will share my surprise that at the end of the year 1955 the Minister for Lands should come into this House and proceed, no doubt on the advice of some anonymous civil servant, to upturn and criticise a technical report produced by a well-known international expert on forestry.
The Deputy is trying to make mischief and nothing else.
The Deputy is not trying to make mischief but the Deputy is going to talk out, whether the Minister likes it or not. The Minister need not think that by interrupting he will stop him. This report, if I remember rightly, was first published in either 1949 or 1950. It is strange that it should have taken some five to six years before the Minister should come into this House and criticise the basis upon which that report was compiled by one of the best-known international experts on forestry.
I would like to get this clear. I think what the Minister said was that the yield from the forests would be a good deal higher than Mr. Cameron had anticipated.
Therefore, the plantation programme would be cut down.
No. I contradict the Deputy there. If he wants to, he may quote my speech.
Will the Minister give me a copy of his speech and I will quote it?
The Deputy is deliberately going out of his way to put words into my mouth I never used.
I will quote the words the Minister used in regard to the figures contained in the Cameron report.
I went through the Cameron report as carefully as ever the Deputy did.
Would the Minister mind quoting the passage he used? I would be quite prepared to correct myself if I were wrong. I agree it is very difficult to pick up accurately the figures the Minister rattled off when he read his statement. I will quote from page 4 of the Minister's statement:—
"Now, let us analyse Mr. Cameron's figures a little more. His allowance for a much increased per head consumption of timber is very generous but I would not quarrel with it. Future population trend is very difficult to estimate but the findings of the Commission on Emigration in regard to future population trend afford little ground for anticipating an increase of 50 per cent. in half a century."
Mr. Cameron, I think, had anticipated a possible growth of population. The Minister quarrels with that assumption. The statement continues:—
"The commission referred to the ‘degree of optimism involved in an expectation of a population of 3,500,000 to 4,000,000 in 30 to 40 years' time' and clearly saw little prospect of any such spectacular increase. For our purposes it is not unreasonable to base present calculations on present population, especially where a generous allowance is being made for an increase in consumption per head of population. That would mean planning against a future annual consumption of not more than 150,000 standards of commercial timber as against the figure of 200,000 standards assumed by Mr. Cameron."
I pause here so that we will get the issues quite clear. Mr. Cameron had in his report, made in the year 1949, estimated our annual consumption of commercial timber at 200,000 standards per year. If words have any meaning the Minister proposes arbitrarily to run his red pencil through the 200,000 standards and write in 150,000 standards. Is that right?
Make a speech now.
If I am wrong, say so.
The Deputy has my speech. Let him work from that.
Perhaps the Minister will not be so hasty about contradicting what was said.
Fire away now.
The Deputy did not preach that in Bangor Erris.
These interruptions should cease.
I did not know Deputy O'Hara was against afforestation in Bangor Erris. Does he also think there should not be afforestation in Bangor Erris?
These interruptions must cease.
I appreciate the difficulty that Deputy O'Hara is in, having regard to the fact that his leader is now announcing a cut-down of the afforestation programme which he and his colleagues advocated throughout the country for several years back.
Where is that? Quote the words where it is proposed to cut the forestry programme.
I will quote.
I will see that you will not be let away with untruths.
Who is in the Chair? Is it the Minister or the Leas-Cheann Comhairle?
Deputy MacBride is in possession and should be allowed to make his speech.
I can quite well appreciate that this is extremely awkward for the Minister because he has campaigned for forestry in company with other members of the Government and of the Parties that support the Government but I have told the Minister—I have warned him before —that I was not going to allow any political considerations to prevent me from ensuring that progress will be made in regard to forestry and that the forestry programme will not be abandoned.
Does the Deputy see the paragraph starting with the words, "To enable the position to be studied more carefully"? Would the Deputy read the paragraph immediately preceding that?
I will continue, if I may, to read the Minister's speech.
It is the previous paragraph.
On which page? Is it the second last paragraph?
No. Before you start on Mr. Cameron.
That does not suit Deputy MacBride. He wants to cloud the issue.
Order!
Deputy Collins should be more considerate than that.
The Minister may as well make up his mind that if I have to stay here until 11 o'clock dealing with this, I will do it.
Nobody will stop you.
Unless I get satisfaction, I will move a motion of no confidence in the Government on this issue and I will not mind whether it suits the Minister or not.
Pulling down Governments seems to be the only function the Clann na Poblachta Party ever had.
If it were not for that function, the Minister would not be sitting where he is at the moment.
Perhaps, yes. The Minister is sitting here by virtue of votes of the people.
Deputy MacBride appreciates that I only want him to read the preceding paragraph——
Deputy MacBride is vexed because I will not allow him or anyone else to misquote me.
The Deputy should be allowed to make his speech.
Deputy Collins wants me to read an earlier paragraph.
Would the House allow Deputy MacBride to make his speech? Deputies will get an opportunity of making their own contributions later.
Deputy Collins has asked me to refer to an earlier paragraph in the Minister's speech. I propose to do it because it is very relevant. The Minister, on page 3 of his script, said:—
"Reverting to the target of an annual planting programme of 25,000 acres, that figure was, as I have explained, adopted as a suitable target in the absence of precise estimation of future timber requirements and it represented a mathematical allowance for planting over 50 years the 1,200,000 acre figure derived from the rough plantable land survey—itself a figure with considerable conflicting margins of error."
That paragraph in the Minister's speech immediately gave me the impression, as I think it must have given to the other Deputies, that this was the first signal that was being raised that the Minister proposed to depart from that particular figure. The figure of 25,000 acres was decided upon by the Government in 1949 and placed before the House and approved of by the House. It was decided upon after due and careful consideration, presumably. To come along in the year 1955, six years later, and to begin to say, "Well, of course, that figure was just a rough figure. It was capable of a considerable margin of error," was, I think, merely beginning to try to put the toe into the door and to say, "we will abandon that figure now". That is the meaning I take of that paragraph——
No.
——particularly taken in conjunction with the rest of the Minister's speech. Now, if I may, I will revert to the portion of the Minister's speech dealing with Mr. Cameron's report. We had already reached the portion of the speech where the Minister had decided to reduce the estimated annual consumption of commercial timber from 200,000, as estimated in Mr. Cameron's report, to 150,000—a reduction of 25 per cent. in our timber requirements, just like that. Then he goes on:—
"Turning now to the formulae by reference to which Mr. Cameron estimated the forest acreage required to supply any given consumption of commercial timber, his estimate that 325 cubic feet quarter girth of standing timber would be required to produce one standard is believed to be cautious but may be accepted as a safe figure. His estimate of average annual yield per acre at 69 cubic feet quarter girth is, however, open to question. On the basis of calculations made recently in relation to the admixture of land qualities now being planted and including an apreciable proportion of poor quality land; it is reckoned, on the most up-to-date yield data available, that an average yield of about 84 cubic feet per annum may be expected. The total forest acreage required to meet in full future potential commercial timber consumption would thus be 580,000 acres or, say, 600,000 acres. That ultimate objective would call for the planting, on a 50 year rotation, of only 12,000 acres a year. These are cold realistic figures and their significance cannot be brushed aside by any frenzied and delirious screaming for more, more, more planting..."
I fancy it is being said that the screaming comes from me, but I do not mind. It is not the first time it has been said about various things that I have campaigned for and I do not mind its being said again. I think I am right in saying that the purpose of that portion of the speech is to show that Mr. Cameron's report is not too reliable, that some of his estimates are wrong and may now be disregarded.
This report, as I pointed out, was completed either in 1949 or 1950. It is rather surprising that it should have taken the Department responsible five or six years before it came along to the House to challenge the basis of that report, to challenge the programme that had been decided upon on foot of that report, particularly when the Minister in the course of his speech said that he would not overrule a technical man.
That was in connection with the quality of the land.
I do not remember in what connection it was. The Minister announced very pompously that he would not overrule the technical men. I would like to know what advice of technical men he obtained. Was it the advice of trained foresters; was it the advice of civil servants in his Department or was it the advice of the person who is not the Director of Forestry? Would it not be a good plan if the Minister sought the advice of some expert on these things? Would it not be a good plan if the Minister filled the vacant post of Director of Forestry which has remained vacant now for a year and a half? If that were done, then perhaps we could get technical advice from the Technical Director of Forestry which would be of assistance to the Minister himself.
The Minister, several times in the course of his speech, said that a madcap rush would be a failure; that excessive speed would be dangerous. I have never heard any suggestion that there is any excessive speed as far as forestry is concerned in this country and I have never accused the Minister of indulging in a madcap rush as far as forestry is concerned. The whole problem not only from the point of view of the hysterical persons and the cranks and the persons actuated by malice against the Minister and his Department, but from the point of view of the country as a whole, the Minister's own supporters and the Government's supporters throughout the country, is that progress is too slow.
This is a measure to expedite the progress.
The measure is splendid and I would be the first person to welcome it here. My only regret is that it was not introduced long ago. I would have no fault to find were it not for the declaration of policy made by the Minister which I take as a clear indication that the Minister intends to abandon the 25,000 acre programme.
I have asked the Deputy to quote where I said that but he has not done so. This Bill has been introduced to expedite the programme and if I am going to abandon the 25,000 acre programme why should I bring in this Bill?
The Bill is all right. Where the Minister was ill-advised was to avail of this occasion to make a statement of policy in regard to forestry which would seem to indicate that he is running away from the 25,000 acres.
The Deputy cannot spread that. I will take good care that he does not do it.
Deputy MacBride is in possession.
The Minister has said that the present planting rate is sufficient to meet our timber requirements. I do not know why that should be said unless it is intended to create the impression that there is no need to do any more and that the Department and the Minister could rest on their laurels.
Where did the Minister say that? He said that the present planting rate would be enough to meet the requirements of the Cameron report.
No, he did not say that. If you like I will find the passage for you. I took it down as the Minister was speaking and Deputy Derrig quoted it.
We will give you the whole evening to find where I said that I was cutting down the 25,000 acre programme.
The Minister never said that. The Minister knew he could not say that. What the Minister did was, first of all, to criticise the basis of the calculations for the Cameron report; secondly, to say that the 25,000 acres programme was open to considerable conflicting margin of error and thirdly, to say that the present plantation rate is adequate to meet our needs. The Minister could not get up and say: "I am abandoning my programme".
I am standing over that but that need not stop us from planting another 25,000 acres a year if the Government decides to do so.
The Minister comes to the House and says that a 25,000 acreage is open to wide and considerable margin of error and then goes on to criticise and attack the figures of the experts and finally says that what we are doing at the moment is enough to meet our timber requirements. These three statements, taken together, convey the impression to my mind that the Minister has no intention of doing more than that. If the Minister will tell the House that it is his intention to plant 25,000 acres a year then I will accept that.
That is very gracious of you.
Will the Minister say that?
The Deputy is trying a police court lawyer's trick of trying to make a man say "I did not beat my wife". I will not be caught with these tactics at all.
Deputy MacBride should be allowed to make his speech without interruption.
Sorry, Sir.
There is no question of a lawyer's trick in this. The Minister is indulging in tricks at the moment in trying to cut down, without reason, a programme that was decided on six years ago.
The Deputy is now being as despicable as ever I heard a Deputy in this House, but he is failing in the rotten job he set out to do.
Personal abuse of that kind and the use of such words as "despicable" and "rotten", if they have any effect, only indicate that the Minister and the Department for which he is responsible is on the defensive. Parliamentary rules prevent him from using different language: the alternative he has is to start using bad language.
Oh, dear, dear!
I wonder would Deputy MacBride read——
Give me a few minutes, please.
——page 6 of the Minister's speech. The Deputy must not have read it.
I listened to it here in the House.
It says: "We must plan, therefore,..."
"We must plan, therefore, for a future planting rate rising steadily from the present annual figure of 15,000 acres to an ultimate target ..."
Read on. It goes on to say: "which must for the present remain open to further deliberation but which must be assumed to be in the region of 25,000 acres."
I am afraid I do not know who is making the speech.
I am making it, but the Minister does not like it and Deputy Collins thinks my speech might embarrass the Minister.
The passage to which I referred the Deputy is on page 6 of the Minister's speech.
It says that for the present the target must remain open to further deliberation. Why should the ultimate target, which has been decided upon since 1949, now remain open to further deliberation? What is the need for deliberation? If there is to be an increase by all means, but if, in the light of previous statements of the Minister, there is to be a reduction then I am all against it. But I think we are entitled to know what is the forestry policy of the Government, what is the forestry policy of the Minister. You see there are many of us on both sides of the House who for years back have been trying to get something done on forestry. Government after Government have come in and still we are told nothing but the difficult things, nothing but the obstacles. So we are inclined to treat many of these explanations with a good deal of suspicion, particularly when one sees for instance that the post of director of forestry has ceased to exist, particularly when one hears criticism of an international expert's views, which have been accepted for years, voiced here in the House with the suggestion that our timber requirements are less than the expert suggested.
I think, in the light of that, it is not unfair to think that the purpose of the Minister's speech here—an extremely unwise speech for him to have made when introducing a Bill of this kind— was intended to postpone for the moment the fulfilment of the annual target of 25,000 acres. If that is not so, it is quite an easy matter for the Minister to correct that by a clear categorical statement that it is his intention to plant 25,000 a year. That correction would of course carry more weight still if the Minister would indicate the year by which it is intended that target will be reached— is it to be next year or the year after or in five years' time? Could we get an assurance that it would be even seven years' time? Surely it should be possible to tell the House when it is proposed to achieve this target so that it would not be necessary to come along here in two or three years' time and say: " Sure we did not have enough plants."
It is with that element in the Minister's speech that I have to quarrel. As part of the excuse why more was not being done, he said that the care of the existing plantations must receive precedence over the planting of new forests. It is quite easy to realise what the purpose of that statement is. It suggests that we are so busy with the upkeep of existing forests that we are not able to do more by way of planting. Why cannot we do more? Are we short of labour for planting or for thinning or for cleaning our forests? There is no reason why the thinning operations and the maintenance operations of existing forests should not be carried out independently of our planting operations. God knows we have enough labour to spare in the country for that.
I welcome the statement made by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government who obviously appreciates the effect of the Minister's speech. He clearly indicated that he was not in agreement with it. I am glad of that because that speech could create a very bad impression in the country. In conclusion I want to say that the Bill itself, though not far-reaching, will at least remove some of the difficulties in the acquisition of land for afforestation. There are a number of details in it that that will need to be considered. One of these details that occurred to me concerns a purely legal question. It is the use of the word "satisfied" in Part I and Part II of the Schedule. That Schedule may lead to legal difficulties in the courts later on because it has been held. that the use of the word "satisfied", in relation to the Minister or to a Government Department, can be interpreted to mean "satisfied upon legal evidence". It might not be always possible to have legal evidence to satisfy the technical legal requirements.
Is the word not used in other Bills where similar clauses apply?
It is just because the word was used in other measures that it has come under review in the courts and that it has been interpreted in the way I have suggested. It has been held that the Minister must be satisfied on legal evidence. That word has become so construed in the courts. Accordingly, I think the Minister should find another word. If I have misconstrued the Minister's object, I hope he will correct, clearly and categorically without any ambiguous reserve, the false impression he certainly created in my mind—and I think created in the mind of even the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government—by making a clear-cut statement as to what he is suggesting, as to when he hopes to reach the 25,000-acre target, as to what steps are being taken now to prepare for two, three, four or five years' time.
As the Minister and the House well know all these things have to be planned in advance. You have to have your reserve of land, you have to buy your seeds and plant them. You have to grow your plants before you can plant. These are things that must be planned at least three years before you can hope to achieve your target. I think the Minister would increase confidence in the administration of his Department if he gave the House a clear indication on these matters.
The Minister and Deputy Derrig took the occasion of this Bill—not quite irrelevantly—to discuss the suggestion which I made recently in Cork, that the administration of forestry might well be handed over to an independent board analogous to the E.S.B., or to Bord na Móna. So that there should be no misunderstanding as to what I did say and so that my views in regard to this matter, so far as Deputy Derrig and the Minister referred to them, may be known, what I did say was this. I will say it again —that over the last 35 years we have neglected and wasted one of the most important potentialities in our economy, that is forestry. It has been grossly and shamefully neglected by successive Governments.
If forestry had been availed of, as it should have been availed of, we could have at least another 20,000 people in employment now. In addition to that, we would have a great many secondary industries built up from timber, from the raw materials which we can produce ourselves. These secondary industries would in turn provide additional employment and additional activity in the country. Successive Governments, when pressed on the matter, have always expressed themselves publicly as being in favour of forestry. They have always said they will not refuse money for forestry; that all the money that is necessary will be made available. But despite that, despite the fact that members of this House, and the public generally, want forestry pushed ahead, and despite the fact that since 1949 we have decided upon an annual plantation rate of 25,000 acres a year, we have not reached it. The fact that so little progress has been made must spring from some reason, and in searching for the reason over a number of years I have been forced to the conclusion that the machinery which we use is either unsuitable for the purpose or unwilling to achieve that purpose.
In the light of that, I feel that it is necessary for us to examine objectively—leaving aside questions of pride and political considerations—how best we can remedy the position and what is the best machinery to use. There are three possibilities. The first one would be to set up forestry in an independent Ministry—that is, apparently, the view which Deputy Derrig now favours. I am not sure whether that view is not shared by Deputy O'Donovan in the light of some remarks he made to-day. Another solution would be to set up an entirely new and separate forestry board analogous to the E.S.B. or Bord na Móna to deal with forestry by itself. The third solution would be to hand over the forestry machinery to Bord na Móna.
Surely the Deputy is not serious about that, whatever about the other suggestions he made?
I have thought over these three possibilities very carefully and I think that, if you come to examine the position objectively away from questions of departmental pride, you will find that there is a lot to be said for the last one of the three for this reason: Bord na Móna already does much the same type of work; it deals with the moving of earth, the drainage of land, the making of roads, the acquisition of land and is accustomed to doing similar types of work. It has an administration at the top which is apparently able to handle the accounting and supervision side of it. It has done a good job of work over the years and it has had to do it quickly. I do not know what the rate of progress would have been if the work had been undertaken by the Department of Lands but I doubt if progress would have been as quick as that achieved by Bord na Móna.
In addition to that, most of the labour force used by Bord na Móna comes into action at a time when there is no pressure for labour for forestry purposes. In other words, it happens that the periods of the year between turf work and forestry dovetail to a certain extent. Planting is done mainly in the winter in forestry which means that there would be a certain amount of dovetailing of labour potentials between forestry and Bord na Móna.
There are three possibilities and I merely happen to take the view that the last one is probably the best. I am quite open to the conviction that a separate Ministry would be better or that a separate Forestry Board would be better, but I am not open to conviction that the present set-up is the best because it has proved either its incapacity or its unwillingness to perform the job it had to perform. I do not blame the Minister; he has inherited the system and it is there, but I think we must face the realities of the situation and realise that if we want forestry to go ahead we have to set up new machinery to do it because the machinery we have tried to work with has been unsuccessful so far.
I had no intention of saying any of these things to-night and I would have confined my remarks to the contents of the Bill on which I had hoped we would have a useful and objective discussion, if it were not for the fact that the Minister and his advisers saw fit to throw down the gauntlet on all these issues.
As far as I can see, this Bill, as far as it goes, meets to some extent the terms of the motion which was discussed here last week. The question of this Bill being acceptable to the House is one upon which there will not be very much doubt because anything that tends to improve the present situation in regard to land acquisition for forestry purposes is welcome. However, so far as I can see and so far as I have learned from the Minister's speech to-day, had I remained out of the House and merely read the Bill I would be much more. satisfied with the contents of the Bill than I am now, having heard the Minister and the appropriate background music to which he has seen fit to treat us.
My view of what he has said coincides very largely with what the last speaker had to say and with the objections he made. Clearly, the inference to be drawn from the Minister's speech was that, although we are bringing in something to help our forestry programme and reafforestation generally, because of various considerations and the opinions of people who are fit to judge, we will not have much of a change so far as improving the acreage under forests is concerned. That is what I understood from the Minister's speech. If the Minister asks where exactly he said that I am afraid I cannot tell him for the simple reason that his whole speech connoted a complete somersault from his previous attitude to reafforestation as expressed by him here on many occassions over quite a number of years.
He has now apparently accepted the position that we must of necessity curtail our planting operations to a more limited acreage than that agreed to as the target by the previous Coalition Government in 1949. I think that is the real kernel of this debate to-night. The Minister's outline of Government policy in relation to the future of reafforestation will not improve the situation for the West, the East, the South or the North. That is what really matters and that is what I think this House should try to change.
There is no use bringing in legislation to improve afforestation and going through the formalities of putting it through the House and on the Statute Book if, at the same time, the Minister, speaking on behalf not only of his Department but of his Government, is prepared to admit, using a great number of words to do so, that it just cannot be done. I am glad that enshrined in the Bill at any rate, irrespective of what the Minister's view may be, there is part at least of what we asked for in the motion discussed here last week. When the Minister was talking here last week on that motion he suggested that we put down the motion because we knew that he or his Department had this Bill in the offing.
I had made an announcement.
If the Minister made an announcement that announcement should have been some time around October of last year because the motion that was discussed here last week arose out of a committee of which I was a member; that committee met for the first time in the beginning of November, 1954. The motion was framed in March, 1955. It was handed into the General Office in April, 1955, and the Minister sought leave to introduce this Bill somewhere around the 8th June of this year. It was unworthy of the Minister to give the impression that we were merely cashing in on his Bill in introducing our motion.
I would like the Minister to feel that in discussing this matter we are very much with him and, if he wants more support than he is getting on his own side of the House in order to push certain views—I do not think his real views are the ones he expressed here to-night—I can assure him he will get that support much more readily from this side of the House in relation to reafforestation.
While that motion was being discussed Deputy MacBride stated that, while he agreed that the Minister should accept our motion, he would not agree that he should accept it in the spirit in which it was offered. He disagreed with the spirit in which it was offered; and he then went on to say that the reason he disagreed was because Deputy Derrig had sat on the Government Benches for 20 years and had done nothing for afforestation. Deputy MacBride knows very well that reafforestation is something about which Deputy Derrig and his colleagues have been doing something for over 20 years, which is more than can be said for Deputy MacBride or, for that matter, for very many people on the Government side of the House now. Apparently Deputy MacBride has an axe to grind at the moment with the Government, with Fine Gael, with Clann na Talmhan or, personally, with the Minister for Lands and that axe has been introduced appropriately enough into this debate on reafforestation. At the same time I do not think it has been very helpful.
Deputy MacBride was apparently very annoyed the other night and he actually threatened to bring down the present Government if they did not go far enough with the reafforestation programme. Why, when he had sufficient numbers under his control in 1949, 1950 and 1951 to bring down the Government, did he not make the threat then and carry it out rather than talk so much hot air to-day about bringing down the present Government when he knows that he and the numbers under his control are powerless to do that?
May I say a word? It was in the year 1949 that the Government decided on an actual plantation target of 25,000 acres per annum and that was five times more than the Deputy's own Party ever planted.
And the Government then never did a thing about it.
They did.
And they have done nothing yet.
We have done a lot more than the Deputy did.
Deputy MacBride's explanation sounds plausible but that explanation, coupled with the statement he made last week, is in itself sufficient to indicate that there is something in this accusation that I am now making against him, namely, that the threat to bring down the Government is made because it is an empty threat and cannot be carried out. If there was any basis for it why was something not done in 1950 and 1951, two years after the target of 25,000 acres should have been reached and had not been reached? So far as I am concerned, and I listened to the Minister to-day, that target of 25,000 will never be reached by the present Government.
Then the Deputy has something to learn.
The Deputy is always willing to learn. He has quite an open mind. Last week when the motion was under discussion the Minister was so long in rising that I was afraid he was not going to speak at all. Whether he wanted to hear what was going to be said or whether he wanted to wait and get the last word in before the news at a quarter past ten I do not know; but, in any event, the Minister did succeed in getting in at the appropriate time and closing the debate. What really alarmed me was the Minister's threat that he was going to bring the gun back again into politics, despite all the talk we heard about its having being taken out of politics. I am wondering now is the rumpus and the little vendetta so obvious between Deputy MacBride and the Minister for Lands really a little row as to who shall have the gun. Is there only one gun? The Minister says he will defend the people lest their land be taken from them. He waxed very eloquent. Is the Minister not sitting with his tongue in his cheek in introducing this Bill to-day? He talked in hallowed tones of safeguarding the rights of land holders last week but enshrined in this Bill is his intention—cloudy perhaps but none the less definite—that although he will not go in and force the farmer off his land, he will squeeze him out.
The Minister says he will never force any man off his land and he would actually take the gun in his hand and lead men to prevent such a thing happening. You cannot have it both ways as the Minister is trying to have it. He is going to ensure that if there is a commonage held by 20 people and that 19 of them say "yes" to the Forestry Department approaches, then the Minister will allow the 19 portions of that commonage to be cut off and one-twentieth to be left to the remaining tenant.
Where is the compulsion there?
The Minister then went on to say that by virtue of this one person being left on his own with only his own small portion he would not be long getting it. Is not the Minister really speaking with his tongue in his cheek when he speaks about guarding sacredly the rights of these land holders when at the same time his very object in a rather roundabout way is to squeeze them out? He is not going to come along and tell them to get out. He is going to say: "Stay there but we will make the position such that you will have to get out and you will come to the Department and say: ‘take my land'." It will not be a question of "how much do you want". He will say "take it because it is no longer any use". Is that not what the Minister has committed himself to do, what he is going to do?
No.
If it is not I will be very glad to hear the Minister say otherwise but what I have said is what I have read.
No, it is not. That man will have the same freedom on the portion he will be left as he had over the whole lot before.
How can he have the same freedom in the confined space of one acre as he would have in 100 times that space?
Because he did not own the 100 acres.
He would not own it but he would have freedom to move over the common. The Minister is getting away from the point that he himself has made. If the Minister wants to contradict that, and that is not his intention, that he does not want to squeeze these people out, that he is going to take the gun if necessary to defend them, let him say so, and more power to him if he does. But he cannot speak with two tongues, one on the motion last week and another on the Bill to-night. He cannot ride two horses at the one time going in opposite directions. That is an impossible task for the Minister of all people and I would ask him to try to get himself out of that predicament when he is replying.
Will the Deputy be here for my reply?
If it does not take the Minister as long as getting in the other night when he had the opportunity and would not take it. In regard to the Bill proper, it is difficult to get around to it because there is so much talk that is not relevant at all. Let us consider that Bill as it now stands. It is something which the Minister feels will give power to the Forestry Division that they do not enjoy and because of the lack of that power to take over land the Minister feels our forestry and reafforestation programme has been rather curtailed. First and foremost, I agree that is so in very many cases although not in all cases. However, we want to deal with this matter as meeting the needs of the majority of cases. Therefore, I feel that this part of the Bill dealing with the acquisition of commonages is something that will attain the end we have in view and had in view in our Private Members' motion discussed here last week.
Let me say that the second part of that motion has been completely overlooked by the Minister so far as registration is concerned. He has not given any concrete proof that those increased activities of the Land Commission that we all hoped for will take place in the West of Ireland, in the congested areas and along the west coast generally. He does go along talking in figures and percentages, some of which are not very convincing. One, for instance, that I came across just a little while ago, he mentioned the other night. I hope all the Minister's conclusions are not based on such figures, because very little weight could be placed upon them. The Minister said, at column 901, Volume 153, of the Official debates of the 16th November, 1955:—
"...at 31st March, 1955, the total area of land held for forestry purposes in the congested districts was 95,000 acres. In March, 1943, the area was 36,000: therefore, over a period of 12 years, we have practically trebled the area of land devoted to forestry in these regions."
If that is a conclusion that the Minister can stand over I believe that he is wasting his time in this House. If, by having on hands to-day 95,000 acres of land as against 36,000 12 years ago, anyone could hold that we have trebled our acreage devoted to forestry in a particular region, he must be a genius. As a matter of fact, it could well be, from those figures, we are doing less in the congested areas to-day than we were, though I am not saying we are because I do know we are doing something more. But to base an argument on the grounds that because you have to-day more lands on hands in those areas than you had 12 years ago, you have trebled your area of land devoted to forestry in that region, is absolutely ridiculous and should be corrected for the purpose of keeping our records at least fairly straight in the House. What I am trying to get at is that the Minister came along with other figures later on to prove how much he was doing in the western regions. I hope the figures quoted are a little more reliable for the purpose of drawing conclusions than those two figures quoted earlier.
The Minister went on to say that at the present time 38 per cent. of the total planted each year is now being planted in the western regions. Does the Minister consider that 38 per cent. is enough?
Was that the last figure I gave you?
I have quoted the highest figure. The figures start at 22 and go up to 38.
Does it go to 44?
No. We have not reached 44.
You will.
Assuming 38 per cent. is not high enough, is 44 high enough?
Even 44 is not high enough.
Is the Minister satisfied that 50 per cent. is not high enough?
I will not answer that.
Is the Minister satisfied that 75 per cent. is too high?
I will deal with it when I am replying.
Could we not then get some proper reply from the Minister? Asking the Minister if 50 per cent. was not enough or if 75 per cent. was too much, is a question that the Minister naturally would not answer. He did not answer it for the reasons I have but for the reason that he is afraid to say whether it should be 50 per cent., 70 per cent. or 80 per cent. The real point, however, is, 50 per cent. of what? Is it going to be 50 per cent. or 40 per cent. of 12,000 acres, 15,000, 20,000 or 30,000 acres. That is really what I want to get and that is where I am afraid the Minister will fall down on this job. By the tone of his speech to-night he has completely somersaulted from the state where he described himself as a fanatic about this business of forestry. Does the Minister still regard himself as a fanatic in putting forestry ahead?
Definitely.
The Minister still believes the word "fanatic" was correctly used in that direction.
I think that is what is vexing the Deputy.
Does he believe he is a fanatic?
I do not see anything about that in the Bill.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture should take himself off to some quiet corner and learn a little about the Department he is in instead of fussing and buzzing in here about something of which he knows nothing.
I would not ask the Deputy to improve my education.
These interruptions must cease.
If the Parliamentary Secretary would allow me I would proceed. He is not as good on that side of the House as he was on this.
I would like to hear the Deputy on the Bill.
He is in the wrong place to get away with interruptions. It does not do him any good; it does not do the Government, any good and that might be dangerous to his position.
In regard to this matter of the western regions getting a fair deal in reafforestation, the Minister has not given us any hope in this Bill and, if he has given us any hope anywhere else, he certainly has not enshrined it in the Bill. The western regions are well suited to reafforestation. There the land is available. The people are available and employment is needed in those areas for these people and afforestation is the only means of employing them. The Minister is well aware of all this. He comes from the West. I do not intend to rehash the reasons for a larger share of planting in the West.
I do want to get from the Minister why he has not indicated in his speech here to-night a firm promise that he will agree to the terms of the motion that was put down last week and will give to the West, the western seaboard, the north-west between 60 to 70 per cent. of the total annual plantation. The Minister is not prepared to go further than to say that he has already mentioned the figure of 44 per cent. I question very much whether or not 44 per cent. is an accurate figure. The figure that I have in writing at the moment is at column 904 of the speech of the Minister last Wednesday. It says 38 per cent. We can take that figure. That figure is much too low. I want the Minister to realise that. In this Bill, he has yet an opportunity. There is still time to bring in something that will indicate and will ensure, no matter what Minister may follow, whether he is from the East, West, South or North, that the western regions, the undeveloped areas, the congested districts, the Fior-Ghaeltacht, will get their due and will get from this House and from this Government a reafforestation programme suited to their needs.
In those areas afforestation can do much more good than it is doing in the other parts of the country in which it is being carried on and afforestation is the only thing that can be done in those areas. Why not get it done? Why should not the Minister, as Minister for Lands and as a westerner, ensure that that will be secured, not only for next year or the year after, but for the years to come and that afforestation will become associated with the West and the undeveloped areas to a very large extent?
The Minister has failed utterly in regard to that matter. I would ask him, even at this stage, to try to get down to this matter and even on Committee Stage to enshrine something in the Bill that will give as a right to the West, a much higher percentage of the annual planting than is being given at the moment and, by putting that in the Bill, ensure that the West cannot get less in future.
The Minister may say that planting carried out in the West has increased over the years, from 22 to 44 per cent., allowing him his own figures. The fact remains that if the total number of acres planted each year should fall for any reason, the number of acres planted in the West will fall. I know that at the moment in my county there is an unlimited amount of land available for plantation, which should be planted. That applies to every county in the West. The Minister can do this job if he wants to do it and I would appeal to him to get down to it and to have it done. The Minister should not let other people, either in the Cabinet or in his Party or in other Parties, put him off his track. He should not allow them to turn him from being a fanatic in regard to plantations into someone who would take the view of the man from the East and give the East the same as the West. The East is getting much more in many other directions. Here is something that can be given to the West and more of which can be given to the West. I ask the Minister to give it. Do not be misled by others. Do not be pushed into the position of letting down Connacht men by failing to grasp this opportunity.
I ask the Minister to see to it that what I advocate will be done and that in future we will have a greater annual planting programme over-all and that the percentage of the total planting done in any year that will be carried out in the West will be in the region of 50 to 75. The Minister can do that. I am asking him to do it. If he does not do it, he will have his own people to answer and the people from the West in general will give their answer in due course. On the other hand, if the Minister should do this job in the right way and look after the interests of his constituencies and these other areas, he will get his just reward at the next election.
The Minister made some points here to-night in regard to overplanting. He based his remarks, I take it, on advice from the experts. One of the things suggested was that if more timber was planted than is regarded as necessary for the home market, there would be a surplus and that that would be disastrous. Is there no export? Is there no output of any kind for timber?
Who said that?
The Minister to-night said, in so many words, that if we passed a certain figure of plantation in a year and continued at that rate, if we passed a given figure somewhere around 12,500 acres, we would be exceeding our home requirements.
Right, yes. What is wrong about that?
What does the Minister propose to do with what exceeds our home requirements? When he made that statement about 12,500 acres, was not the Minister trying to indicate that it would be a bad thing or a difficult thing if we found ourselves in 40 or 50 years' time with more timber than we needed?
It would be a great thing.
Does the Deputy say he is right in saying it would be a bad thing?
Who said that?
The Minister here in this House to-night—if he wants now to deny it—indicated in so many words that timber in excess of our requirements will be produced in 40 or 50 years' time if we plant annually a greater amount that 12,500 acres.
Right, yes.
Did the Minister say that?
Yes.
In quoting that figure, possibly, I am being rather uncharitable to the Minister but I do not think so. He said a number of other things.
You are deliberately —not being uncharitable—misquoting what was said.
I am not deliberately misquoting what was said. I believe that the Minister is well able to look after himself, without a legal adviser in the second row as he had when Deputy MacBride was in the House and when he was attacked.
I will deal with you in a minute.
I will not be too severe on the Minister. I am only trying to get this straight. It is not straight. Perhaps that is something with which the Party to which Deputy Collins belongs are rather familiar and perhaps that is why he can see through something that is crooked and I cannot. If I have got the wrong slant on the matter I will ask the Minister to indicate that now. Is the Minister afraid that the surplus timber that might be produced in 40 or 50 years' time would cause a problem?
Did I say that in my speech?
Of course the Minister did. I have quoted what the Minister said and the Minister has agreed that he said it.
I gave a figure of 12,500 acres and I never mentioned a word about exports. If we were in a position to export the produce of 12,500 acres. after supplying our own needs, it would be a very happy position.
You and the whole Government would go floating down the river after it, just as in the case of Tulyar, if you got money for it and dollars at that. There is timber from Kerry lying in Dun Laoghaire at the moment and I wonder if it is for the construction of a raft upon which the Government can float out after they have gone to Limerick next month.
You floated out after about six months.
When we were a Government we came out when we had reason to come out.
You were put out.
You are afraid to come out.
And you will stay out.
Interruptions must cease and I must say that I have very little sympathy for people who invite interruptions. I say that to both sides of the House.
The Minister referred to the possibility that there may be a surplus of timer in this country 50 years hence as a result of the action of himself and the Government. Is he worried that there may be? Did he state to-night that he is worried that in 50 years from now there may be a surplus of timber in this country? Is the Minister worried or is he not? That is all I want to know. If he is, has he considered that the population may be much greater in that time, and that our needs may be much greater and that we may be using much more timber than we are to-day? On the other hand there is the possibility that we may not need timber at all. I feel that if the Minister had that idea at the back of his mind it may influence him to be less ardent in putting forward the 25,000 acre programme than he was when he was, as he said himself, a fanatic about this question of afforestation. I do not think he should worry as to what we are going to do with the surplus of timber, if we have it in 20 years' time. Even if there was no utility for it and even if timber was not needed, an increased acreage of timber will be an added attraction to this country, although it is already well endowed with natural beauty. I feel that the Minister should not worry any more about this position.
I feel that the Deputy is worrying too much about 50 years' time. I am not concerned with the argument but with the repetition of it.
I will not concern the Ceann Comhairle with the argument or with the repetition of it in the future. The fact still remains that the Minister has not given any hope to this side of the House that he is going to be generous about reafforestation. There is nothing in the debate to indicate to any of us that he is prepared to plant more than 12,500 acres or that he is prepared to go as high as the 1949 target forced on the then Government by Deputy MacBride. If he is not prepared to give us that undertaking there will be quite a number of people throughout the country who will be confused and particularly the people in the West.
I appeal to the Minister again to insert something in the Bill to give to the West its just due in regard to forestry. We are not getting it at present and we have no indication that the Minister is prepared to pay more money for any land he may acquire under this Bill.
It was too hard to get land in the past and it will be too hard to get it in the future unless more money is paid for the land when we are looking for it. A pound or two pound per acre added to the very heavy cost of afforestation will not sink the ship. I ask the Minister to consider that, in addition to the facilities he will be granted in this Bill, he should also pay a little more money for land in the different areas that he goes into. Very often the land in the West, because of its very scarcity, may be worth much more to the land holder than good land is worth in the wealthier portion of the country.
How much land is rejected because of the failure to make a price?
Surely the Minister is not serious in asking that question. Does not the Minister realise that the majority of the land required at the moment is offered to the Department? When a person comes along and offers his land the natural conclusion is that he wants to sell. The number of sales under such circumstances will naturally be very high and the number of break-downs very low. When you come into a district under this new law, where commonages are the usual run of things, you will come up against the problem that there will be many more break-downs on the question of price unless you insist on using your rights under the Bill, which I hope you will, in order to increase the amount of land in particular in the West.
There is one thing that the Minister has already been asked to clarify. That is with regard to the position of the person who objects to his portion of a commonage being taken over. The Minister has already been questioned on this point, and it is only because I think the Minister gave the wrong answer when he was questioned, that I want to ask him again how that matter would be cleared up. Is it the position that if one or two or three persons, holding a commonage, object to having their rights acquired the Minister will, under this new Act, deal with those people by giving them one, two or three parts of the commonage as a common holding, or will he give them one-twentieth of the original commonage each?
No.
Another part of the Bill deals with something which it described as an easement. Apparently there are two sections, one dealing with easements and one dealing with commonages.
There are two kinds of commonage, one where the owners own the fee simple or the ground. The other deals with commonages where they have grazing rights. Section 14 deals with one and Section 5 with the other. Under either section, they can have their portions separately or in common.
Irrespective of whether they own the ground or have just grazing rights? If there are between one and ten objectors to the commonage being taken over and if all these people want their portions fenced separately——
No. They will get a fair and just apportionment.
I am not disputing the apportionment. It is agreed that somebody higher than themselves will decide what portion they will get. The point I want clear is whether each individual will get his apportionment sealed off and fenced.
No. They will get their fair share of the commonage.
But earlier the Minister said something about having in mind the fencing of the separate portions and I immediately thought that we would be spending on fencing more than we would be paying for the land itself. If this were done I could visualise a ridiculous pattern being created.
Such a scheme would be unworkable.
I quite agree. The position therefore appears to be that if there is more than one objector in any commonage they will collectively get a portion of the commonage—a fair and proper proportion—closed off to themselves but not individually fenced.
Yes.
The proportion of the commonage will be marked out for the two or three or four objectors and they can divide it later between themselves if they wish.
That is so. The only fence we will put up will be on the forest side. That is as far as we will go.
In conclusion I should like to say that as far as we on this side of the House are concerned we welcome the Bill in so far as it goes. We are sorry it has not gone further and, if there is any way in which the Minister, before Committee Stage, could bring in some amendment which might mean greater activity in the west of the country, I would be delighted as would many of the Minister's own constituents.
I think it is only right that this debate would be brought back to its proper perspective. I do not know whether it was done wittingly or unwittingly, but Deputy MacBride construed certain parts of the Minister's statement in a way which I cannot accept. The situation apparently is that in the course of his speech the Minister made reference to a technical report prepared by Mr. Cameron which was styled a rough survey of the plantable land in this country, estimated at a figure of 1,200,000 acres. The Minister indicated that this Bill is very likely to make available certain lands that have not yet been offered; the Bill may give the Forestry Section the right to make title to lands that have not been offered because of title difficutlies. It envisages that the figure mentioned by Mr. Cameron may be substantially increased. Let us take the figures as we find them. The Minister in his speech dealt with the envisaged programme, Deputy MacBride, by some queer twist, took this speech to be a deliberate abandonment of the target of 25,000 acres. No matter how I read the speech I could not concur with that interpretation.
May I ask the Deputy what this means: "It will be another five or ten years before we can get beyond the experimental stage?"
I would say it means exactly what it says—that in relation to a certain facet of the work in which they are doing a lot of experimental work on bogs and so forth, it will be quite a number of years before the Department have accumulated sufficient data in that sphere. That does not mean that the target of 25,000 acres has been abandoned. I should like to say that I have no objection to Deputy McBride asking me these questions as I go along. From Mr. Cameron's estimate we take it that there are 1,200,000 acres available. The Minister envisages that in 50 years we will have arranged for the planting of all that area and that is as near to 25,000 acres a year as makes any difference. If the purchase of land is improved and we get more land on offer, I take it that the Minister's target within the 50 years will be substantially in excess of 25,000 acres a year. Therefore what the Minister intends is completely at variance with Deputy MacBride's interpretation of the speech.
I hope the Minister will wind up by giving us a clear statement of what he intends.
These cheap tricks will not work. Deputy McBride wants me to apologise now for something which I never said.
Deputy Collins on the Bill.
Let us get back to the reality of the problem. Deputy MacBride, apparently, took some exception to the fact that technical data now being collected by the Department show that, to a certain extent, there was an appreciable error in the estimate Mr. Cameron made of the land available for forestry. At best, Mr. Cameron was put in the position that he was asked to map out a programme on a rough-and-ready estimate of the amount of land that would be available, given rough-and-ready figures as to the type of land that would be available and on these to calculate the type of wood that land would produce. Since that report was issued the Forestry Department has been able to test technically what the yield per acre of the quarter-girth—in which he was so interested—in fact was, and the result was that, instead of the yield being 59, it has in reality worked out at 84. That naturally leads to a reduction in the figure which Deputy MacBride cavils at. In other words, instead of having to cut the extent of forest that would be necessary, if the yield were 59, we will only have to cut the extent of forest that is necessary, because we know that the yield is going to be substantially in excess.
Therefore we need less trees?
No. No tricks like that. You will not get away with that.
Believe me, I am able to deal with this better than the Minister.
Yes, leave it to Deputy Collins.
No, just this particular argument. The position is that this point is in relation to what Mr. Cameron estimated were our commercial needs at home. Now, who but Deputy MacBride has brought the suggestion into this House that that was our optimum aim in forestry?
Half our commercial needs, he said.
Even if it is half our commercial needs——
There is quite a difference.
I never envisaged forestry—nor indeed in fairness to him did Deputy MacBride—on the basis that having reached the stage at which we could supply our own needs we would then be in the position to supply a tremendous amount for export. I am thinking that the Minister in his argument was dealing purely with the question of the requirements set out in the Cameron report and he said that in order to meet these it would be necessary to plant 12,500 acres per year. That would be half of our requirements, and to meet our requirements as set out, to give us half our commercial timber we would have to plant 12,500 acres. The 12,500 acre figure has come into this purely in relation to the Cameron report and the fact that the investigations which the Department have been making in relation to that have been distorted—
No, he tried to distort them.
——have been distorted out of that pattern into something else. The position I take it is this. I have been a very severe critic of the Forestry Department: I have gone to the trouble of doing a bit of research and, whatever may be said about the last 35 years, I think it is due to the Department to say that at least in the last five years they have shown a tremendous capacity for expansion. I will deal before I sit down with the facts and figures in relation to my own area and my own county.
The Minister comes in here and says it is only possible for him this year to plant 15,000 acres of land and keep up at the same time the necessary work on forests that are in a state of development necessitating either replanting of seedlings that have not grown or thinning. There may be some difficulties here. I am sure there must be technical difficulties because I think in dealing with growing forests or planting of plantations there must be a certain amount of technical skill and knowledge necessary. I presume one of the Minister's difficulties at the moment in view of his expansion programme with the development of a considerable number of new centres may be that for no other reason than the fact that men are not available, he may not be able to expand employment as rapidly as possible. Even if you take the unskilled work I understand there has to be a certain amount of skilled supervision.
We have been given many reasons why there has been on progress but it is the first time that particular reason has been advanced.
Deputy MacBride does not appreciate the fact that there is some technical knowledge and skill necessary in relation to certain facts of afforestation.
Would the Deputy say then that we should first have a technical Director of Forestry—fill that position first?
I could not agree less. I think if we had sufficient good foresters on the job——
You are quite right, because we have a good Director of Forestry at the moment.
Deputy Collins.
Let us proceed on the reasoned basis. The Minister can plant 15,000 acres this year. This is not anywhere in the region of the 25,000 acres a year that we want but at least it is a step in advancing and expanding the area that is being planted each year.
Deputy Derrig, when speaking, became agitated about the pool of land which you must have in reserve if you are going to step up your planting. I think that is not a rational approach. Whatever difficulties may arise about the pool, when we have reached full development in forestry, we should certainly not allow a consideration like that to hinder us from stepping up planting.
To return to what is fundamental in this whole thing, because the Minister made a speech which was not, strictly speaking, relevant to the Bill at all, we have got away from the realities of what is before us. I feel that the Bill has merit in so far as it goes, but I honestly believe it is only skimming the problem. I do not for one moment suggest that by means of a Bill we can suddenly create some kind of Utopian situation for the Forestry Department to enable it to burst out into this great worthwhile national development that we all envisage, but I do think when we come to deal with the problems which a Bill such as this suggests— problems of defective title and commonage—we should have gone on to deal with what has apparently been a burning question with a number of Deputies from the West and which in some respects affects myself in my constituency. We should have gone on to deal with the problem of many people who are prepared to offer fairly extensive, rough, inferior holdings to the Forestry Department if they can get an exchange of some kind of reasonably economic holding in its place. It is not as burning a problem with me as it may be in the areas of some of the other western Deputies.
I think the Minister as a western representative should have endeavoured to deal with that problem in this Bill. If we are envisaging this Bill as something which will enable the pool available for forestry purposes to be substantially increased that problem should have been faced up to and, with the Forestry Division directly under the control of the Minister, it seems to me it should have been both practicable and possible to work out a simple scheme whereby people in the position that they can offer fairly large holdings suitable for reafforestation should be able to take advantage of some system of interchange with the Land Commission. I make that suggestion quite seriously. I think it is one upon which there would be a good deal of unanimity in the House. It is, indeed, something which would complete the pattern.
Because of the Minister's methods of introducing this Bill, there has been a very wide avenue of discussion. I am anxious to know from the Minister what exactly he hopes to achieve, particularly in relation to some of the old-established forests in County Cork, such as Lisgoold and Kilworth. My information is that the intake of land in these old forests is practically negligible. Instead of expanding from these centres, the work now is devoted purely to growing and developing forests, as distinct from new plantations. I know from discussions I had that the story may be substantially different in the western areas.
I am anxious to know whether this Bill will enable the Minister to deal with many of the problems that have been presented through the offers of land in the Beara Peninsula, where commonage exists on the hillsides or in the submarginal land. Will this Bill facilitate the taking of the large tracts of land that have been offered throughout Bandon, Macroom, Ballingeary and Inchigeela area? Will the new venture embarked upon by his Department in Glengariff be effectively enhanced in its land intake by this measure?
It might be better for us to be a little less critical at times of the Forestry Branch and to get down to concrete achievements. While I am not satisfied that the figure has reached the optimum that it could and should reach, I am gratified that the intake of land in my area has been substantially increased. I was amazed to learn from the Department last week that they have some 6,000 acres in process of acquisition in West Cork and over 5,000 acres under inspection at the moment. It would be unfair not to give credit in a situation like that—that is a substantial forward impetus—and I have been outspoken in my criticism of the Department's lethargy in the past.
It is a tragedy that we are inclined in this matter to go into side issues which lead to a clash of personalities or to a bitterness which should not show itself. We all appreciate now— and nobody more than Fianna Fáil, who for 20 years did virtually nothing about afforestation and are now quite worried about it—that there seems to be a tacit understanding to leave the past behind and get on with the job of afforestation so that there will be a future for timber and timber by-products. It is unfortunate in that situation that the genuine anxiety of some people may lead to friction, a friction stimulated merely by an honest exuberance to get the job done. I feel that the clash that arose between Deputy MacBride and the Minister was a clash of personalities rather than of principles. I think the Minister is anxious that afforestation should expand as rapidly as possible and I do not think Deputy MacBride has been altogether fair in interpreting the Minister's speech as he did.
The task before us is an immense task. The present expansion is commendable when one remembers that forestry is merely a subdivision of the Department of Lands, that it is hampered by a lot of unnecessary detail, that it has not got sufficient staff, that it has not its own examiners, and that it has not got its own investigation staff. That is a tragedy. It is these administrative difficulties that hold up progress. Taking all these into consideration, the expansion has been significant vis-á-vis other Government Departments. It is our anxiety to increase the rate of expansion and to put more impetus into the job. That should not be misconstrued by the Minister. It is a genuine expression of goodwill in relation to something that is common case.
In the development of forestry we have an immense potential of national wealth. Apart from that, we have a tremendous potential to stem the haemorrhage of emigration from the western seaboard and to establish a pool of permanent and continuous employment within the Gaeltacht and Fíor-Ghaeltacht areas. That is why I say the Minister should have gone further in this Bill and dealt with what has become a substantial problem in the western areas. There are many people who are really not so much seeking payment for their lands from the Forestry Department in these áiteanna iargcúlta as some kind of economic holding to live on, on which they could get down to the job of making an economic unit of that in which to maintain their family and themselves.
This Bill, as far as it goes, will undoubtedly have the goodwill of the House generally. While I deprecate the manner in which the measure was introduced and the false atmosphere in which this debate commenced, I do feel it is necessary for me to correct any statements that may have been distorted. It is up to the Minister to indicate that we are not wrong in our conception of his anxiety to go ahead, push up to the 25,000 acres a year plantation and to exceed it if it becomes practical and if the pool of land becomes available for him so to do.
It is also necessary for the Minister to appreciate that this Bill is not going as far as many of us would like. The Minister waxed eloquent here on the question of compulsory acquisition and was threatening to become a militant leader if these rights were to be invaded. There is none of us asking the Minister to push on and trample arbitrarily on the rights of individuals. What we are asking him to do is to take the powers in legislation that will enable him to push ahead with the practical development of our forestry plan and not afford some person who might be activated by any improper motives or by any desire for obstruction, protection by law that will enable him to defeat the better interests of the nation as a whole.
I do not believe that that type of difficulty or obstruction in relation to isolated islands in a large plantation would ever come from the type of people who enjoy the right of commonage or who indeed are offering their poor holdings for forestry purposes. It is in that spirit, I think, that anybody in this House suggested that the Minister should take unto himself certain powers that would enable him to obviate difficulties unreasonably put in the way of the advance of a great national project like afforestation. It is not right for us to use intemperate language or ill-advised vociferousness in relation to these particular necessities because throughout the legislation of the State in relation to other Departments the principle of compulsory acquisition in extremis causis is acknowledged. For the Minister to suggest that it would lead to interference with anybody's rights is to my mind either cynical or else deliberately misconstruing the situation as it exists.
I do not wish to weary the House. Whatever about the Minister being a fanatic on forestry, I have no hesitation in admitting that I am one and that I hope before I die to see much of the area that was once adorned by forests throughout West Cork replanted by his Department, and as long as my voice is in this House I will keep pressing and driving until it is done. I feel the Minister and Deputy MacBride distorted the whole trend of this debate and that the twittering countercharges they had against each other were slightly unworthy of both their positions. It would be far better for us all if we accepted the situation that we are all pushing onwards as quickly as possible in a unanimous spirit to the maximum total target in reafforestation and that, having given the Minister whatever expedition we can in the passage of this Bill, having urged him to improve it in any way that might make his task easier, we should say: Cuir uait an chaint agus lean leis an obair.
This Bill has been received well, generally speaking, as will every Bill dealing with forestry be received. I have been in this House for many years and when legislation on forestry was introduced a spirit of goodwill prevailed and encouragement was given to the Minister to push on with the scheme. To-night I have learned something that I never knew before about forestry. It is rather weird. I am told that by taking out of production each year 10,000 acres of land that hitherto produced cattle, sheep or goats, had some tillage on it, or perhaps grazed some cows, which undoubtedly represented a big sum of money nationally each year, by destroying all the assets and removing the people who made their living on it, we are all going to grow much wealthier.
I am in complete disagreement with the Minister and with every Deputy in this House who has spoken on those lines, that trees will give more employment and increase the wealth of Ireland. It is absurd. I have years of experience of the growing of forests and the person who will tell me that you can give greater employment by growing trees than by producing cattle, sheep, and so on, does not know what he is talking about. There is employment for the first three, four or five years in the drainage and fencing of the land. After planting, a small number of men would be employed to weed and care the young plantation. There is a long stretch before any further employment is provided. Undoubtedly, there is big employment when the timber is ready for cutting. That is the period of real employment.
So many people have disagreed about what the Minister said in his speech that I do not want to raise any trouble but I think he said that 50 years was the period taken to mature. That is absurd. I have seen timber grown on bogland which matured in 25 or 30 years. Excellent timber can be grown on bogland if care is taken in planting. I have seen trees dug up that were 100 years old, at the bottom of which there was a deposit of blue marl which had been put there when the trees were planted and which seemed to make the difference. I wonder what our forestry people are doing in that direction.
There is a great dependence on exports. We were waiting on expert advice for many years back. For many a year I discussed in this House the necessity of planting some of the mountain slopes in Leitrim and I was told again and again that experts had found it to be unsuitable. At a later stage, an international expert was brought here and surveyed the area in question and his opinion was that trees could not be grown at such a height over sea level, on bog. I said that it was not bog. I recognised that the foliage that I saw growing there was not grown on bogland. I dug the surface and brought up alluvial soil where I had been told there was bog. We had experts here, not merely Scottish, English or Irish, but continental. The reports of the experts are regarded as if they came from wizards. In my view there is nothing like a practical test.
A lot of the theory on afforestation is waste of time. Timber can be grown in many places where it has been grown before, but were also want to grow it where it has not been grown before.
Are we to take out of production so many thousands of acres which to some extent contributed to the national wealth and which maintained a certain number of people? Are we to take away this means of livelihood for this number of people in order to plant trees? I disagree with the man who says that by growing trees you give as much employment as can be provided on the same area of land when it is devoted to agriculture. It is untrue and misleading to suggest that.
Let us get people of common sense to deal with this problem, people who know the facts. Where ordinary farming is carried on, the surrounding towns and villages benefit. The farming community go into the towns and villages to buy their domestic requirements. If we substitute forestry for that type of farming we destroy the countryside and the towns and villages. We also destroy the schools. We take away the need for churches. We take away the need for the excellent roads we have built. We will do that if we recklessly proceed with a forestry scheme in the belief that land that is planted can maintain as many people as can be maintained on the same land when used for agriculture. This matter should be approached cautiously so as to ensure that we will not substitute trees for people. Let us make sure that we do not destroy permanently all the amenities that pertain to civilisation. There is wealth in trees but we should not, in order to produce that wealth, retard progress.
I cannot understand the scheme the Minister has with regard to commonage. The Minister wants no compulsory powers so far as taking land from people is concerned. Therefore, he is going to adopt a form of satisfying everybody who uses land in commonage. He assumes that a certain number of people using land in commonage will agree to give up their rights and that those who may not want to give up their rights will be compensated out of a pool created by the land that is handed over. If they take over 1,000 acres, and a half of it is to be distributed amongst 50 people who have to be encouraged and induced to give up their land and if the other half has to be given to people who refuse to part with their land, where are you going to get the land for forestry? If we give these people anything less than what they have they will not agree to give up their own land. Probably we would have to give them double what they have at the moment and in that case we would have nothing left for forestry. I cannot follow the Minister's plan there.
This commonage question is a very difficult one apart altogether from the goodwill of the people about their rights. You have these commonage lands, such as mountain land, which often run into several thousand acres. Everybody whose lands abut on that mountain has the right to graze cows and sheep and they do this practically all the year round. If these people are deprived of the right of grazing these mountains, which abut on their own land, it means wholesale confiscation of their means of living. You must. give them some substitute for what you are taking from them. There are periods in the summer when these people can get their grazing free and they can sell at the end of the year. It means the existence of many of them and if you take the right of commonage from them you deprive them of all they have.
This will mean a clearance as effective as any that ever took place in this country. If the grazing rights are taken away from these people, their holdings will not be enough to live on and many of them will be left derelict. They cannot possibly live on them without the grazing rights. It seems to me impossible to deal with this question effectively without doing serious damage. I would like very much to have a fuller discussion on this point than it is possible to have across the floor of this House. I do not see how we can improve our lot by taking thousands of acres of land out of production every year and putting it to a use that cannot give a return for 50 years. I want a better explanation of this matter than has been forthcoming so far. There are plenty of areas suitable for timber in this country which could very easily be used for that purpose.
Somebody mentioned Bord na Móna as being the most suitable body to take charge of land for forestry but I think that Lands and Forestry is a better combination than to put them into two separate Departments. The utilisation of cut-away bogs is one of the most practical proposals we could discuss. It is ten or 15 years ago since I raised the question in this House that when the Land Commission was dividing bogs, these boglands should not be split up into allotments or plots amongst various owners some of whom never cut a bag of turf on their allocations. Some of them cut their turf and others did not, with the result that there was no uniformity of drainage. We have all over the country great areas of bogland with holes dug by different owners which now contain a permanent content of water and for which there is no means of drainage. I advocated that there should be no such thing as allotments of that sort but that each bog should be drained and fenced and given to the tenants as they required it for their allocation of turf year by year.
Acres of that bog are now useless, useless because it cannot be drained. If it had been left to common drainage, it would now be useful in many districts for enlarging tenants' holdings because it can make excellent tillage land. It could also be used for forestry purposes. If you look around the bogs that have been put out of production owing to bad management by the Land Commission you will find a lot of land that could be put into production for tillage and also for the planting of trees.
These areas that have been mentioned are ones that may give rise to difficulty but look at the area where there would be no difficulty in acquisition and which would not cost any money. Look at the area of land along the embankment of the railways. Grass grows there for a period of the year until it becomes inflammable and then goes on fire and sometimes does a lot of damage. Trees could be planted along these slopes and embankments. These lands are capable of growing trees as well as any other land. Look at the acres of land along our roads that are lying derelict and waste. That could be put into timber and it would be better to plant these waste lands than to go down the country and take away the rights of commonage from the people. The people will object to these rights being taken away and I can see no prospects for the development of forestry if these are the lines you are going to follow.
Is not that sheer destruction? When the trees come in the people go out, no matter what the Minister may say. Will the Minister tell me whether or not it is his intention to take 10,000 acres of land out of production each year and to grow trees upon it? Is it his intention to take land out of production, no matter how small that production may be, and to turn it over to afforestation?
Is the Deputy against afforestation?
Indeed I am not. I am dealing with the problem intelligently as I see it, but I am not against accepting the proposal made if I can see it is for the general good. If some person, with more knowledge than I have, like the Deputy, will show me that trees will provide more wealth on the land to be acquired than did the husbandry of the small farmers who worked it I will accept the proposal. But can trees provide as much wealth or maintain as many people as did these small farmers who owned a little bit of grazing, a few cows, a few cattle, a few pigs, or a few hens? Will the growing of trees maintain as many people as that kind of husbandry has done? I have listened to the discussion this evening on the great benefit this will be to the West. Some Deputies have asked for increased interest in the project by the people of the West. I warn these Deputies, before they give continued support or acceptance to the scheme, that it has been my experience that when the forests came in the people went out. The families who went out because of the trees never came back. I have often met people on the trains coming to Dublin as a result of this forest-growing. Some of them came from a large estate——
Where would that be? What forest?
How many forests does the Minister know in the West? Does he know Glenfarne estate?
I do.
Where is it situated? Perhaps that is not a fair question.
It is perfectly fair but it is not true to say that either in Glenfarne or Drumkieran any people were forced out by forestry operations.
Does the Minister not know that the case of the Drumkieran people was one of the strongest points I ever made in this House? I asked the Minister to look after the migration of the people of that place. Does the Minister know that he has done nothing for the people of these two areas in the years that he was in office, that his policy and planning have been deliberately fixed so that these two areas would be left out? How many migrants did the Minister take from the three counties in the West In the last three years? The Minister refuses to tell me. The number taken from the County Mayo has been in excess of the total number taken from the other areas in the North-West.
That is pure rubbish.
It is not. It is a fact.
More shame to Fianna Fáil.
Did the Minister say "more shame to Fianna Fáil"?
More shame to Fianna Fáil.
I thought I heard the Minister whisper that interruption.
The Minister was not in the House when Deputy S. Collins was speaking. Deputy Collins made an excellent point when he said there should be a pool of land provided, not merely for the growing of timber but also for the provision of compensation for those from whom bad land was taken for afforestation. But more land is being taken now than in the Cromwellian clearances. The Minister should say to these people that afforestation is nationally a good investment from the long-term point of view. He should say: "We have now taken a pool of good and bad land. We are not going to drive you out without shelter or means; we will give you land somewhere else." The Minister should stop this planning to have the West of Ireland cleared of families and replanted with trees. There is a danger that he will succeed where Cromwell failed. That seems to be the present policy of the Government. I think do agree that the Minister has a difficult job but I do not think he is planning along the right lines. I think there is no alternative in front of the small farmers of County Leitrim than to move out and I say that trees are a very poor substitute for families.
I welcome this Bill and congratulate both the Minister and the former Minister for their contributions. Before proceeding further, I feel I must refer, if only briefly, to the speech of Deputy MacBride. Having listened to him this evening and on previous occasions on this subject of afforestation, one would be inclined to form the opinion that he wants the whole country to believe that he is father and mother of afforestation in this country. I certainly do not share that view.
I have also formed the opinion that Deputy MacBride has devoted some time to reading forestry books not written by experts on the subject. It appears to be his practice on his way from the Four Courts to call at some of the second-hand bookshops in Bachelor's Walk or in Moore Street, buy literature on forestry and swallow it hook, line and sinker. It is regrettable that a man of his standing and his experience of public life should behave and speak in such a way as he has spoken here this evening. I feel his main objective is to try and discredit the present Minister for Lands as well as his predecessor. One thing is certain in any case—he has not succeeded in his purpose this evening. He went so far as to say he was prepared to have a vote of "no confidence" on this issue. Having listened to Fianna Fáil Deputies and having heard them speaking in favour of this measure and giving an assurance that they propose to support it wholeheartedly and cooperate in every way possible, if he is to have that vote of "no confidence", it seems to me as if he and his two boys will be on the far side of the House and everyone else on this side. He will not have much company on this vote of "no confidence" on the forestry issue. Therefore, I think Deputy MacBride must feel ashamed —that is if he has any shame left, if he ever had any—of his contribution here to-night. I regret that I have to be so hard-hitting in my speech on a subject of this kind but I feel it is very necessary when you have such irresponsibly cheap talk going on.
The Minister was blamed here because he introduced a number of matters that might not appear relevant to this Bill. I am convinced he was forced into that position. We are aware that Deputy MacBride has gone round the country in recent times and on previous occasions and has availed of cheap dinners and lunches——
That does not seem to be relevant.
With respect, Sir, I think it is.
We are not discussing Deputy MacBride's activities——
In relation to forestry?
The Deputy might come to the Forestry Bill now.
That is what I am coming to. Recently, Deputy MacBride was in Cork at a luncheon and referred to the activities of the Forestry Department. He was not satisfied to confine himself to attacks on the Minister; he also attacked the Minister's staff. I want to say at this stage I am not without appreciation of all our forestry staffs have done over a period of years. I think they have done very good work. I think the proof of that is there in that over a period of years we have an increased acreage of planted forests in the country. The fact that year after year forestry has increased is, I think, a great tribute to the forestry men, both in the centres down the country and in the Department headquarters here. I am prepared, as one Deputy in this House with a reasonable knowledge of their activities and work, to pay them that compliment and do it very gladly.
I was proud to hear the former Minister here this evening speak in support of this Bill and give valuable advice and criticism which he was in a position to give because he had experience of that Department. While I do not agree with everything Deputy Derrig and his Party says and does, I must pay him this tribute—that he has a first-hand knowledge of the problems and difficulties with which the present Minister is confronted and has it over a very long number of years. Like many of us, he was reared in the heart of congestion and saw it first-hand in his native district. Not alone that, but he traversed more than once many of the districts where forests are now growing when it was not very safe to do so. It is heartening to think that in one who is now at the helm, and in Deputy Derrig who was once in a similar position, we have men with enough common sense to apply sanity and reason in their approach to this whole question of forestry which is vital from the point of view of national economy and the amount of employment it gives.
It is heartening to the Irish people to think that there are in this House men of common sense prepared to apply a common-sense approach to the problems—and they are problems— and who are prepared to offer fair and honest criticism on such subjects as this. I think that the people will at least appreciate the fact that the people opposite on this occasion are most helpful and co-operative.
I listened also to-night to Deputy Blaney from Donegal. Donegal's problems are much the same as those in my own constituency. I join with him in stressing the importance of making the West of Ireland generally what I might describe as the timber yard of the West. The Minister and Deputy Blaney also spoke along the lines of advocating more and more forestry for western districts. It will be appreciated that in other parts of the country where you have more arable land that forestry in many cases would be detrimental to national economy and instead of doing good by planting, you might do quite a lot of harm. I am with Deputy Blaney in advocating more forestry for the West and I agree that a special case could be made for the West because it would be appreciated that in western areas we have quite a lot of non-arable land, which would be suitable for forestry and should be planted. If special attention is given to the West I think the rest of the country should not grudge it the little prosperity or benefits that might bring.
Deputy Collins referred to another matter which would be very desirable. I think he was the only one to refer to it. It is a matter with which the Minister, myself and other Deputies in this House are quite conversant. When we speak to people of voluntarily giving up a tract of land to the Forestry Department for the purpose of getting a greater area of land available for forestry, we find almost invariably they say: "Can you give me an exchange holding? I will gladly leave. I will give up my 100 acres of poor land if you give me a holding of 35 or 40 acres of arable land. I would be only glad to get out of here."
Deputy Collins expressed regret that the Minister had not some provision in his Bill for that type of case. To my own knowledge, the Minister is aware that these questions are being asked and that we have to point out that you have, on the one side, the Forestry Department and on the other the Land Commission, and that it is the Land Commission which deals with the rearrangement of holdings and the relief of congestion. I agree with Deputy Collins that if anything could be done in that respect it would be most helpful from the point of view of increasing the pool of planting land available. I can appreciate, of course, that there are difficulties in the way. If we are to have forests in an area we will have to have a certain amount of employment and people prepared to work on those forests. One cannot move everybody out of that particular block and then prepare to transport labour ten or 15 miles at a later date.
Deputy MacBride suggested the setting up of a board on the lines of Bord na Móna or C.I.E. I listened with great attention to the present Minister and to the former Minister, Deputy Derrig. Both of these are men of experience and they have expressed the view that the Forestry Branch, as at present constituted, is the most suitable body for dealing with this matter. I am certainly more inclined to take their viewpoint as against that expressed by Deputy MacBride.
We all know that when it comes to a question of acquiring land for rearrangement, division or afforestation, very often the Department of Lands has to work in close co-operation with the Forestry Branch in order to iron out the many difficulties that arise. I have in mind a situation that arose in my constituency last week where it was absolutely essential that the Forestry Branch and the Land Commission should meet on the spot to iron out difficulties. I am sure that situation could equally well arise in other parts of the country. Deputy Derrig pointed out that if we remove control in this matter from the Department of Lands and give it to some board such a board would not be accountable to this House and forestry would no longer be within our control. He pointed out that Deputies putting down questions about the activities of such a board could get no information. We all know what happens when questions are asked in connection with C.I.E. and various other bodies.
I think that would be a most unsatisfactory situation. Indeed, it would be highly dangerous. It is only fair that in a matter of this kind the elected representatives of the people should have some say and that the Minister in charge should be answerable to this House. That is the only way in which we can have some say in the direction of policy.
I disagree to a very large extent with what Deputy Maguire has said. He referred to the taking up of land which might be regarded as poor quality land; he argued that this is bad policy. Now I am wholly incompetent to decide or to judge as to what is or is not suitable. I think the same is true of Deputy Maguire. I am not now trying to belittle his opinion in any way but I certainly could not stand on the roadside and decide whether land is good quality land or bad quality land or whether it is suitable for forestry or tillage. Therefore, I think that statement was a rather sweeping one.
He said that many areas should not be planted with trees and that they should not be taken over. We should not set ourselves up here as experts on technical matters. That is outside our competence. The forestry inspector has spent a large part of his life in college making a particular study of these things and he is naturally more competent to decide what is plantable and what is not plantable. Deputy Maguire seems to ignore the fact that quite a considerable acreage, even in his own area, would, if planted, give considerable employment. He seems to rule out altogether the idea that forestry gives employment. Not alone does it give immediate employment, but it also provides long term employment to the generations that will follow.
The tourist industry is important to the economy of our country. Forest centres take the barren look from the country and it is noticeable that in the areas where forests have been established tourists have been attracted. That is an added advantage. It must be remembered, too, that forests will help to dry our climate. In the long run they will even effect an improvement in temperature.
There is one matter about which I feel very strongly. I refer to the compulsory acquisition of land for afforestation. I do not like compulsion in any form. In this country it is against the grain to use compulsion. The more you compel an Irishman to do something, the more he will pull against it. If there is a reasonable approach, on the other hand, much better results will be achieved. We have heard a good deal about the old cry, "To hell or to Connacht". Every Deputy admits that it is in Connacht that forestry should be advanced. I am a descendant of those who were driven on to the mountainside. I am proud of the fact that I was reared in that tradition. Let it be clearly understood that the question of compulsion to the descendants of the people who resisted the landlords, without any weapons, is anathema. They defended their religion and their rights. It is unthinkable that a native Government would use compulsion to order these people out of their homes.
People like Deputy MacBride who express such viewpoints and such sentiments have very little appreciation of the true sentiments and feelings of the Irish people. Let Deputy MacBride try that on. He will meet with a very warm resistance. I do not wish to misrepresent him, but I gather that is his idea. These people had a struggle to live on these mountain holdings. In many instances they were not able to make a living and the father of the family, and perhaps the mother, too, had to emigrate to England, to Scotland or to some other part of the world to find the ready cash to supplement the meagre income at home. It is incredible that anyone in this Parliament, an elected representative, would defend such a policy. Let me warn him here and now: "Hands off such holdings."
We must get the holdings by co-operation and by paying the proper price for them. On that subject, I am not satisfied the full price is being paid to many people surrendering land for forestry purposes. These people have put up with great trials and difficulties and helped to save this nation down through the years in one emergency or another. We remember that during the last emergency these poor people in mountainy holdings went into the bogs in their neighbourhood and produced the turf that supplied this city and other cities throughout the country when we could not get fuel elsewhere. These are the people in whose interests I am speaking to-night. Let me say that there is no question of the Forestry Department or any other Department thinking they can come along and, by force of law, acquire compulsorily from these people, because their sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters are well able to resist such attempts; they have proved their mettle in the past and would prove it again if necessary. Therefore, let there be an end to this nonsensical agitation about acquiring land compulsorily and trying to browbeat such people.
One paragraph in this Bill empowers the creation of machinery by which the Minister for Lands can purchase an interest in lands held by a person with defective title provided such person has enjoyed interest for at least six years. Any of us who are conversant with this whole subject of land acquisition know very well the difficulty about acquiring commonages, the difficulties about title in regard to these mountainy holdings. As I have already stated there are, particularly in those areas, cases where there are very large families and many of those people had to emigrate to England or America. Perhaps the father, who might be the registered owner, died intestate. Many difficulties have arisen in the past and if this Bill has the effect of clearing up those difficulties—and I believe it will to a very large extent—then I can see that much more progress will be made in the matter of increasing our acreage of land under forestry. I do not think this Bill is a cure-all for these difficulties that exist but at least it is going part of the way. I believe it will help to a considerable extent and that you will have a big flow of land coming in immediately this Bill becomes law and it will be possible for our officers in the Department of Forestry to acquire land much more readily.
The Minister recently made reference to the progress of afforestation in the congested areas in County Mayo. In particular, I am glad to see a substantially increased acreage in our own county. In 1950 there was only one such forest covering 650 acres in the county. That was at Foxford. Now there are six forests which have been opened at Doolough, Lough Carra, Nephin Beg and Nephin Mór, Tourmakeady and more recently at Glenamoy, making the total acreage now devoted to forestry about 11,000 or 12,000 acres, with approximately 150 men employed. I am particularly glad that due to the handing over of the Glenamoy area to the Forestry Section the Bangor Erris area will benefit from that and that in the same region at a place called Shanettra a new forest centre of approximately 14,000 or 15,000 acres will be opened at an early date. In this particular area, as in many other areas, you have quite a lot of unemployment and this new forest centre should alleviate the position.
We look forward in Mayo and, I suppose, in Connacht generally to this Bill bringing increased prosperity and confidence to our people. This native Government is anxious to find machinery for acquiring land at an economic price, at its full market value, at the earliest possible date. It is very easy for people to talk recklessly and carelessly about acquiring land, about planting thousands and thousands of acres without any regard to the difficulties of acquisition and the many other difficulties there are even when the forest is planted.
I am glad to think that in this House this evening with the exception of one individual namely, Deputy MacBride, who came in here for no other purpose but to cause trouble, to pour filth in all directions, there was a common sense approach to this problem. While we are not all agreed about the technical points connected with forestry in one way or another, it is heartening to hear that an Irish Parliament, a Dáil, can meet this evening and express views freely and frankly and that we can have cooperation and goodwill on all sides. I, personally, on behalf of my constituents, wish this measure every success because it is something for which we have been waiting a long time, something that will give us an approach to a difficult problem in our constituency. The question of title and the many other difficulties that do exist as regards land acquisition for forestry purposes will, I think, be relieved considerably when this Bill is implemented.
Deputy Moran.
On a point of order. Does the Chair deem it advisable to call on any Labour Deputy in this debate?
The Chair calls on Deputies in accordance with the way they offer themselves.
Are we to take it you exclude the Labour Benches?
The Deputy shall cast no reflection, even by inference, on the manner in which the Chair calls on Deputies.
Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Clann na Talmhan and Clann na Poblachta have already contributed.
The Chair can call only one Deputy at a time. Only two Fianna Fáil Deputies have spoken, two Fine Gael, as far as I know, and one Independent Deputy.
Clann na Poblachta and Clann na Talmhan have also contributed.
I will not argue with the Deputy. The Chair calls on Deputies in accordance with precedent. Deputy Moran.
The discussion on this Bill has been rather interesting if it is only because of the arguments that have arisen and particularly because of the Parties concerned in the arguments. I had thought that this extraordinary upsurge in national confidence created by the inter-Party Government was going to shed such a pall of harmony over the nation that we would never have reached the stage when we had Deputy MacBride speaking in the tone of voice in which he spoke to the Minister or that we would hear him scarifying Deputy O'Hara as he did to-night. In the first instance when Deputies on this side of the House claimed that this measure was brought in as a result of the motion tabled by myself and my colleagues, and the Minister for Lands denied that and said it had nothing to do with it, I thought at the time the Minister was not being quite candid. I am now inclined to accept the Minister's explanation that our motion had nothing to do with this Bill because it has been quite patent from the disclosures in this House that this Bill has been brought in in an endeavour to keep a firm front before the public between the different Parties. Evidently the Minister did not get the draftsman to do the job well enough for Deputy MacBride, however, and instead of pouring oil on troubled waters he has thrown a spanner in the works and now we have the position we have witnessed to-night as between these Parties.
There are some important, fundamental matters to be dealt with in this Bill. Having read the Bill, I am very much afraid that it can best be described as a stunt. I am sorry to have to disagree with my colleagues who, possibly, took the explanation issued in the White Paper but I wonder how many Deputies have read the Bill section by section and have seen what it implies.
I propose in due course to deal with that aspect of the Bill, the way its proposals differ completely from what is set out in the White Paper and what the Minister is trying to put over on the House but, first, I want to discuss the question as to whether or not the Department of Lands is the suitable body to deal with afforestation. I had an open mind on that question for quite a long time but I am now quite satisfied that the Department of Lands is not competent to deal with afforestation. If we take the purpose for which the Department of Lands was originally created, that is, the relief of congestion, and the poor progress that has been made with that fundamental national problem, I do not see how they can deal with the question of afforestation if it is to be dealt with as a national problem and if forestry is to be a national asset.
The best test as to whether the Department of Lands, or the Department as at present constituted, is the proper body to deal with this question or is capable of making even the slightest progress in the matter is to look around one's constituency to see what endeavours have been made to organise the community or to get lands suitable for afforestation. Is it not true that where land has been made available it has been made available in the main by private effort, by people getting together in a local area and trying to get the Department to take over land for afforestation, instead of the Department trying to get after the people? Every sincere Deputy knows that that is the position and that that is the first fundamental test on which the Department falls down.
The effort for afforestation is coming from the people, from private bodies and not from the Department whose job it is to get the land. Perhaps it is that the officials of the Department of Lands Forestry Branch have too many other duties thrust upon them. Perhaps it is that they regard this matter as being down the list in importance compared with the question of land acquisition, division and rearrangement. The fact remains that no progress worth while has been made and, in my view, no progress will be made unless some type of body is set up to deal with it, some body or section that will be answerable to this House, whose job will be to get the suitable land.
There are various Departments that have officials throughout the country. Those that spring to mind straight away are the officials of the county committees of agriculture who are in touch with people in remote areas and who, if given a lead or directive from some section of Government, would be able to point out places where the people are willing to have a mountain or other land that would be suitable for forestry taken over. There should be some section whose business it would be to go to the people and to organise public opinion in local areas in favour of making land available. That is number one.
Number two, of course, the overriding consideration in this matter as in the question of land acquisition for the relief of congestion, is the question of the price that will be paid. Each one of us knows that, in these times particularly, unless a reasonable price is made available, the people will not surrender their rights over lands that they own and the Department will not get land that is suitable for forestry unless they are prepared to pay for it.
These two questions go to the very root of this problem and the quicker the House faces it, the better. If we are to make the progress that has been suggested or set our eyes on a certain target we must face these two fundamental problems first. Whatever the origin of the row between the Clann na Poblachta Party and the Government may be, there is one thing clear from the Minister's statement on this measure—that running right through it the Minister said in no uncertain way that he at all events has changed the target, the 25,000-acre target.
Where is that?
I will quote it chapter and verse for the Minister. On page one of the Minister's statement he says that the idea of a State authority acquiring land, save for some very limited and localised project such as an airport, and in so doing running counter to the whole activities of the Land Commission is completely unacceptable to anyone who has the interests of Irish farming at heart. That is the first item set forth by the Minister. The next is on page three, where he refers to the target of an annual planting programme of 25,000 acres and says:
"Reverting to the target of an annual planting programme of 25,000 acres, that figure was, as I have explained, adopted as a suitable target in the absence of precise estimation of future timber requirements and it represented a mathematical allowance for planting over 50 years the 1,200,000-acre figure derived from the rough plantable land survey— itself a figure with considerable conflicting margins of error."
These were the figures on which the 25,000-acre target was based, obviously, and the Minister is careful to point out to us that the target, evidently, was based on wrong figures or, certainly, that there has now been a mathematical allowance of error made for that figure.
The Minister goes on to say, at page four:—
"The total forest acreage required to meet in full future potential commercial timber consumption would thus be 580,000 acres or, say, 600,000 acres. That ultimate objective would call for the planting, on a 50-year rotation, of only 12,000 acres a year. These are cold realistic figures and their significance cannot be brushed aside by any frenzied or delirious screaming for more, more, more planting to pull up for our present grossly inadequate timber supplies."
Here the Minister says, it would seem to me, if words have any meaning, that 12,000 acres a year would meet our commercial requirements.
Commercial.
And that anyone who goes beyond that figure must belong to this screaming class who are looking for more and more planting. He goes still further and he says:—
"We are now planting at a rate sufficient to meet our commercial timber needs in 45 to 50 years' time and there is nothing more we can do on that front except to ensure that the Forestry Division is given a proper opportunity to maintain and develop the plantations in the proper way."
In that paragraph he sets forth his belief that we are now planting at a rate sufficient to meet our commercial timber needs. Down at the end of the next page he says:—
"In this way forestry can be relied upon to bring a lasting benefit to the economy of the congested districts and other undeveloped areas in western counties whereas a madcap rush to plant the blanket bog of the western seaboard would assuredly end in dismal failure. It may be another five or ten years before we can get beyond the experimental stage in this work and fix a definite annual target."
So apparently there is no target fixed for the congested areas. Has the Minister completely gone away from the target of 25,000 acres which was laid down and does he feel that if we can maintain our present progress we are doing very well? If that be so, and from these quotations I cannot see how it can be otherwise, let us be candid and say so.
I object to "stunting" on this question of forestry. If the Minister says and believes that in the foreseeable future our rate of planting must be from 12,000 to 15,000 acres a year the people should be told that and we should go on that basis. It is idle to pretend to the people that to-morrow or the week after or next year the figure is going to reach 25,000 acres if we believe ourselves that 12,000 or 15,000 acres is the limit. The people are entitled to know what the goal is and if the Government is planning a goal of 12,000 or 15,000 acres a year the people should be told that.
In column 901 of the debate on the motion the Minister said:—
"I think it was Deputy Moran from South Mayo who chided me for doing too much in the west, particularly in County Mayo. It is a strange turn of the wheel to find him now as a signatory to this motion stating that we are not doing enough."
That is a blatant lie and the Minister well knows it. I never made any such statement.
The Deputy will withdraw that remark. He must not characterise a statement of any member of this House as a lie. It is unparliamentary and must be withdrawn.
Very good, Sir. I withdraw that remark. This canard which he has placed on the records of this House is a complete misrepresentation of anything I ever said and I want to deny it in a most emphatic manner. What he is referring to is where I had exposed another stunt of his in connection with this question of forestry—where he arrived outside the town of Louisburg with about 14 Press photographers, eight or nine land officials, seven or eight members of the Clann na Talmhan Party and a bulldozer and planted a whin bush and then wanted to make out that that was afforestation.
The Deputy has plenty of room to travel on the Second Reading and on the remainder of the motion.
We know now where Deputy Moran stands as regards forestry.
You will know and I hope the House will know before I finish here to-night.
There are one or two other matters that I would like to direct the attention of the House to. In column 906 of the debate on the motion the Minister said:—
"I am having introduced a Bill which is going as far as humanly possible to go under the Constitution and as far as I am determined to go at the moment. Both myself and every other member of the Government will oppose any attempt to acquire land compulsorily for forestry."
This is a statement of the Minister. What have we here in this Bill? The most of it is concerned with the acquisition of land compulsorily for forestry. The most of it is for the purpose of taking land for forestry from people who do not want to give it. These are the sections enshrined in this Bill although the Minister told us a couple of nights ago that he and every other member of the Government will oppose any attempt to acquire any land compulsorily for forestry.
Where is the compulsion in the Bill?
The whole of some of the sections deals with compulsory acquisition. All the sections dealing with acquisition in the principal Act refers to acquisition for afforestation purposes.
That is not true.
The Minister tried to put over the idea that he would not take land compulsorily for afforestation while, at the same time, this Bill has several sections for compulsory acquisition. That should be made clear to everybody. I do not say that in certain circumstances the compulsory powers should not be used, but what I do object to is the stunt of trying to put over that the Minister would not use compulsion when we are dealing with a Bill which is chock-full of compulsory powers.
In the same column, in the same debate, the Minister says:—
"We have a body which acquires land compulsorily for the relief of congestion, but that is a different matter from going into a farmer's house and telling him: ‘You get out of your farm and go where you like as we want it for growing trees.' If there is to be anything of that nature, I, for one, will head men with guns to defeat it. It is for the good of everybody to know what a red-hot question this is."
It certainly is a red hot question. Because of this promise of the Minister, who seems so concerned with Deputy MacBride's mythical sniping at the mythical Clann na Talmhan Party and at the Minister, the people were concerned that the Minister had taken down the gun to lead the army. Prices fell on the stock exchange when the word got out that the Minister rides again. I think that the Minister should not be allowed to frighten the country in this way. I think that the Taoiseach should reassure the country that these things will not happen and that he should endeavour to keep the Minister from taking down his gun again. It has had a devastating effect on the peace-loving people of the country and before any further preparation is made to move troops by the people across the Border the Taoiseach should reassure them that Deputy Blowick is not going to take down his gun.
As for the Bill itself I think it is a stunt measure because there is not a thing in it that is going to add 100 acres of land to the goal for afforestation.
