I thank the Chairman. I submitted my opening statement beforehand. I was not quite aware that people would not be here so I have got to be very careful about what I say. I quite respect that. I will not be overcritical and will be as fair as I can to everybody.
I thank the committee for its invitation to present an update on ash dieback. Mr. O'Connell and I have appeared before the committee previously. I will briefly outline the history of how we got to where we are today. I will then update the committee on our perspective on what has happened recently. Last year, we attempted to explain what we felt needed to happen and how we felt the committee could assist in achieving something that will make a real difference to a very sorry situation.
Turning to the history of this matter, we presented to the committee regarding problems growers were facing with ash dieback disease and detailed the appropriate measures needed to deal with the problem, which had not been forthcoming at that point, in October 2020. In November 2020, the committee asked the Minister of State with responsibility for forestry, Senator Pippa Hackett, and her officials from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine's forestry service to appear before it to answer questions on what was being done to deal with the problems in the forestry sector, which was in deep crisis, as members know.
We are not interested in apportioning blame for how the disease infected this island. We are primarily interested in getting a fair resolution to the problems this disease has caused for those who were encouraged by State authorities to plant ash trees. These people had a legitimate expectation of a very profitable return according to the official promotional material. However, when the Minister of State was asked how the disease came to be in Ireland, she gave a detailed account of how it was imported on plants infected by the disease. These plants were imported through nurseries by forestry companies and planted in plantations. The disease was first detected in 2012 by the Forest Service Inspectorate in the new plantations in which these infected plants had been planted. The Minister of State volunteered information, presumably supplied by her departmental officials, that there was no fault over this on the part of the departmental phytosanitary security system because, under EU regulations, it was not possible for the Irish authorities to prevent the free movement of plants across EU member states' borders.
The Minister of State presented this explanation to the committee as the reason the Department is blameless as regards anything to do with the importation of the disease. The problem with this explanation is that it is not the whole truth. The first action taken by the then Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine when the disease was first detected in Ireland was to introduce, by way of statutory instrument, a ban on the importation of all ash plants. This clearly demonstrates that the Department did have the power to prevent this disease being imported. Did the Department fail to take appropriate action when it was needed? During the period leading up to this, everyone in forestry in the EU was well aware of the risk this disease posed to our native ash growing in Ireland. Why did the Department, knowing the threat to trees in Ireland, fail to carry out due diligence? Surely, it should have advised the Minister to impose measures to prevent the disease being imported. It is relevant that the phytosanitary security plant import system prior to this was changed and relaxed. This was against expert tree health advice that certification introduced needed to be coupled with a quarantine period. The change to the plant certification system, without this extra safety measure, rendered importing plants to pose a significantly greater disease risk.
As mentioned, we are not here to apportion blame. We are here to get a fair resolution to the problem. for this to happen, however, it would be helpful if the pretence that everyone was powerless to prevent this catastrophe happening was dropped. The Minister of State and her officials made it clear that they had no intention of changing the reconstitution and underplanting scheme, RUS, introduced in June 2020, which replaced the previous scheme that had failed to help the situation. Again, this scheme was designed to control the spread of the disease and allow for the identification of possible disease-resistant trees. However, there are problems with both these aims. It is not possible to control the spread of ash dieback. It is unfair and unreasonable for the State to expect growers who have lost so much to manage a dying crop of trees in the hope of finding the odd immune tree for State experimentation without paying them to do so.
During our presentation in October 2020, we explained how the RUS was not fit for purpose. We outlined the specific measures omitted from that scheme that were essential to deal with the ash dieback problem effectively. Full credit to the committee - and the Chairman - because it published its considered report on this in March 2021. It supported our call for the changes needed to the scheme that we explained were necessary. Vital elements that needed to be included in a reform approach were and still are: sufficient financial assistance to clear the affected trees; in the absence of the ability to plant a similarly commercial species of broadleaf to ash, to assist in identifying suitable replacement trees and, where that is not possible, to assist in returning the land to other forms of commercial agriculture production; suitable income supplementation in the form of premiums to provide an income off that land is needed; and the substantial losses that older plantation owners are facing needs to be compensated for.
I will now provide an update. The focus of the forestry service since the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, presented before the committee in November 2020 has been on the forestry policy group and Project Woodland. The latter came about following a recommendation by a consultant, Ms Jo O'Hara, engaged to review the James Mackinnon report. It is significant that the subject of ash dieback was excluded from her brief, as it had been excluded from discussions on Project Woodland. At this point, I will ask why the officials in charge of forestry in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine are now asking that the forestry service be called the department of forestry within the Department. This rather reminds one of how the power was claimed in George Orwell's Animal Farm.
Is the service element in the duties of departmental officials to forestry defunct? Is the focus now on regulation and policing regulations only? LTWO representatives have had a number of meetings with the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, in the past 18 months. She made various promises to take another look at the situation but, apart from a couple of very minor cosmetic changes to the RUS, there has been no attempt to address the horrendous mess ash growers face. We met the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, a year ago. He listened but was not inclined to get involved, apart from preferring to leave all decisions on this matter to his junior Minister. This is of concern because, ultimately, the responsibility rests with him. The upshot of the authorities of the State not taking appropriate action has resulted in two planting seasons being lost to those affected. On top of the losses caused by valuable trees dying, it costs ash dieback-affected plantation owners to partake in the RUS.
If the plantation is small and young the cost may be weighed up by plantation owners against having to live with this destruction and a belief that they are powerless to gain anything better. The reality is that they will have to invest to start again with no compensation and no income from their plantation land for the foreseeable future. Remember any broadleaf trees planted now will take 70 years to grow so that is two generations before there is a return.
There are some plantation owners who have decided to apply for the RUS in order to be paid their premiums that have been halted. So there is a distinct element of coercion involved in promoting the RUS. Forestry companies are all in favour of promoting the scheme because they are the only ones guaranteed to make money from the scheme. Landowners who signed up to the RUS expect that they will never be treated equitably. Larger plantation owners, who are the most affected group, are in an age group where their energy to fight for their rights is compromised. There are very few of them for whom signing up to the RUS makes any sense. We are here to fight for them, their children and their grandchildren. These people now feel as if the forest service has its name on their title deeds. They wonder if there will be anything in their holdings for their grandchildren as they observe how they have been treated.
Once the time of year comes when leaves fall from the trees there is about a five-month period over the winter where the progression of the disease across the country is hard to identify. Apart from the odd wind that snaps dead trees and branches the general public could be forgiven for thinking that affected trees are just winter dormant. Come mid-May, like this year, it has shocked people to clearly see that ash trees are dying from ash dieback at an incredible rate. With this comes a lot of other problems related to the dangers involved in falling trees that are being ignored.
Never in the history of the State would it appear that farmers who have incurred such significant losses caused by a disease have been given no income support and no compensation for such loss. After ten years and more of inadequate action by the authorities in charge it is no wonder that the people affected are turning really angry. They are now investigating all legal routes to gain redress for what they have suffered. This type of action should be completely unnecessary if what this committee recommended 15 months ago had been implemented but it is not. Frustration mounts and the relationship between landowners and the Department over forestry and woodland in the private sector is getting to a point where the relationship will not be possible to salvage. It is a sorry fact that the forest service has compounded the loss and suffering caused by ash dieback by delays in issuing licences, which has prevented people from harvesting ash trees for hardwood manufacture. Those who had healthy trees and could have harvested them have watched helplessly as their trees went from having a significantly high value to being virtually worthless.
Why are we here and what are we asking for? We want the Government to pressurise the Department to address this problem in a genuinely fair and efficient manner. The sectors in the Civil Service with responsibility to sort each of the issues involved need to be questioned as to why they have not taken appropriate action. Pressure needs to be applied to make the necessary funding available so the Government must come up with resources.
The RUS is a failed and badly designed initiative. It needs to be replaced by a scheme that assists people rather than costs them. The most important element in any scheme that will have a beneficial effect is to provide an income from the land for the future. To set aside the resources needed to do so it is vital to gather facts as to how many landowners are affected, how much land is affected and what amount of planted land affected is at each different stage of growth, etc. This information should be at hand in the Department. I am afraid that we, as a group, cannot access the information because it has been deemed information that we are not allowed to access under data protection legislation. Teagasc is an advisory service and it must be tasked with finding alternative ways to make similar land income promised in growing ash. Good decision-making depends on decision-makers having decent and factual information but no meaningful effort has been put into gathering this information, which is unbelievable.
We would like the Chairman of this committee to invite the forestry representation in Teagasc to attend to outline what Teagasc has done to investigate the way forward for people who have lost every potential benefit they legitimately expected from growing ash and what Teagasc proposes to do. I am not talking about research into propagating ash trees that might be immune to ash dieback. That is a long-term project that has merit but it will be of little or no use to people who face this immediate crisis now. Teagasc needs to carry out vital research into the best ways forward for private forestry. It is shocking to be told by the director of Teagasc, whom we met very recently, that his organisation has not been requested to conduct research into ash alternatives or costings.
Privately-owned forestry in Ireland has now reached a stalemate situation. The way private landowners have been treated has turned them away from the idea of planting trees. Given the climate change situation and our national commitment, it is incredible that the decisions made by the forestry service, and Ministers, with responsibility for the growing of trees are killing off private tree growing in this country. While this is never going to be stated policy, it is the logical outcome of everything that is being promoted.
We need the support of committee members to reintroduce a level of logic and reason into decision-making on what the national policy should be for national tree growing. Every week we read the latest harebrained proposals, which makes one wonder if the proposer lives on the same planet as us let alone is in charge of national policy. We plead with members not to sit back and wait for what the committee recommended to happen. It will not happen of its own accord. The committee needs to exert significant pressure. I urge members to please keep questioning what is being done and continue to apply pressure in order to get meaningful answers. Do not be fobbed off. We can feed the members many searching questions, the answer to which will be very informative. Please join our call for action now to sort people out who have dead trees and trees dying from ash dieback. Think about the mental health effects on elderly people and young people who feel utterly rejected by the State on this matter.
Apologies for the rushed presentation but time is short. We hope to make up for this in answering questions.
