Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine díospóireacht

Afforestation and the Forestry Sector: Discussion

Chairman

Apologies have been received from Deputies Leddin and Kehoe, and Senator Boylan. Before we begin, I remind members, guests and persons in the Public Gallery to turn off their mobile phones.

The purpose of this session is to examine afforestation and the forestry sector, while the second session will relate to an update on forestry sector targets. In our first session, the committee will hear from representatives from the Save groups and the Social, Economic, Environmental Forestry Association, SEEFA. Each group has been allocated one hour for its engagement with the committee.

On 28 February, the legal requirement for mask wearing in all settings was removed. However, it is still good practice to use face coverings, particularly in crowded areas. The Houses of the Oireachtas Service encourages all members of the parliamentary community to wear face masks when moving around the campus and in close proximity to others. While the easing of restrictions removed the general requirement to maintain 2 m physical distancing, public health advice continues to state that maintaining a distance from other people is good practice.

Witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they give to the committee. This means witnesses will have a full defence in any defamation action for anything said at a committee meeting. However, witnesses are expected not to abuse this privilege and may be directed by the Chair to cease giving evidence on an issue. Witnesses should follow the direction of the Chair in this regard and are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that, as is reasonable, no adverse commentary should be made against an identifiable third person or entity. Witnesses who are giving evidence from a location outside the parliamentary precincts are asked to note they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts and may consider it appropriate to take legal advice on this matter. Privilege against defamation does not apply to the publication by witnesses, outside the proceedings held by the committee, of any matter arising from the proceedings.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make any charges against any person outside the Houses or an official, either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. Parliamentary privilege is considered to apply to utterances of members participating online in this committee meeting when their participation is within the parliamentary precincts. There is no assurance in respect of participation online from outside the parliamentary precincts and members should be mindful of that when they make their contributions.

I welcome Mr. Francis Cassidy, Mr. Brian Smyth and Ms Teresa McVeigh from the Save groups. I invite them to make their opening statement.

Mr. Francis Cassidy

Gabhaim buíochas as an gcuireadh teacht isteach ar son na bpobal timpeall na hÉireann atá faoi bhrú leis an bhforaoiseacht.

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for affording us this opportunity to make a presentation and talk about the communities in which we live and the pressures we are under regarding forestry and forestry policy in Ireland.

Forestry, in many areas, has a bad name, especially so in the area where I come from, which is west Cavan. It has resulted in the decline of farm families living in our area by falsely inflating the price of farmland, enabling investors to outbid local interests. The subsequent reduction in population has further deprived our rural villages of services and users. Our landscape has been irreparably blighted, not just by afforestation but also by clear-felling, which leaves vast tracts of our hillsides barren, in a manner similar to Armageddon.

Although some of the forestry is privately owned, a very small part is owned by people residing in the area. To the families of west Cavan, Leitrim, Kerry or Wicklow, it is no different whether the Sitka is owned by Coillte, a pension fund or a farmer from Cork. The daylight is blocked; the neighbour is gone. Absentee landlords are no advantage to the local economy. They pay no road tax or development levies on new builds or extensions. They employ no workers. It is lose-lose. The families who remain are often the last families on laneways that were planted on both sides, creating a tunnel effect. Isolation and light deprivation are well-known contributors to depression and social withdrawal.

We have provided the committee with a written submission in advance and we will be happy to talk at length about any issues members wish to raise.

Chairman

I thank Mr. Cassidy. He stated very little of the land under afforestation is privately owned. Does he have figures on what proportion is owned by people living in the locality?

Mr. Francis Cassidy

Yes. I can talk about west Cavan in particular and my colleagues might talk about Leitrim and other areas. In west Cavan, the total area, based on 2007 figures, is 30,000 ha. Coillte owns almost 4,000 ha. The figure that is privately owned is 1,821 ha, meaning approximately 20% of the land area in west Cavan is under afforestation.

In answer to the Chairman's question about private land, approximately 500 ha of a total of 30,000 ha are owned by local interests. The average plantation owned by a farmer in the area would be 5 ha or 6 ha. They are very small.

Mr. Brian Smyth

The figures we have for Leitrim are not absolutely clear, but approximately 50% of the forest estate is owned by Coillte. Some 30,000 ha of forestry are planted. The average size for farmers from our estimation is 6.2 ha and that for the companies or investors is 22 ha. Of course, farmers only plant one plot and the investors have multiple plots and are proceeding to purchase more to build larger portfolios. The pressure on farm families from the state aid exemption is problematic. It is distorting the decisions farmers make, the entry of new farmers and the access to land both to lease and to purchase. The afforestation scheme is distorting the access to land. It is when the percentage of land reaches a certain limit acceptable to local people at least that the issues have arisen and the resistance to it has increased and is increasing all the time.

We identified all the issues here. There are issues for farmers and farming. There are very different types of forestry. A farmer planting some space is very different from a corporate drive to produce timber because farmers need a regular income over a long period rather than investing, sitting back and waiting for it to mature and provide a return on the investment. There is no real distinction in the afforestation programme between the goals of achieving quality net carbon sink or carbon sequestration as opposed to timber production. There needs to be a distinction on that. The system of support for farmers needs to be quite different from that for timber production because farmers are not necessarily timber producers. They are farmers and they want to farm. Young people want to get into farming, and they want to farm. Forestry is certainly a mix for many on the farm, but it is not the be all and end all. It should be possible for them to make decisions to plant that as part of providing a multi-source income. Rather than focusing necessarily on timber, they should have the option of doing it for biodiversity reasons or for long-term carbon goals.

We know the state aid exemption is distorting the market for land in Leitrim and distorting the decisions young people are making on whether to get into farming and how they can access land. It also generates other significant issues that are pointed out in the submission. The issue of farming and forestry is one issue. The licensing system is obviously problematic. We continue to address that in our observations and appeals. Regarding environmental impact statements and 30,000 acres planted in a drive to continue to plant, the advisory appeals committee has told us that there is no limit on any townland or parish. People can continue to plant as much as they want until it is all planted if necessary.

There is no consideration of the goals of local communities. If a parish wants to try to keep a school open, the goal is to limit the number of farms sold and planted so that people can actually live there. That goal is not accepted or reviewed in the process of afforestation licensing, which is problematic for many communities. There are many other goals such as keeping the village alive and keeping the shop open. The shop will only remain open when people remain in the place. The drive to plant in areas like ours in Leitrim, west Cavan, east Clare, north Kerry and Wicklow is driving people out and creating demographic decline beyond what would be expected in these rural areas.

Chairman

In his opening statement Mr. Cassidy said afforestation has inflated the price of land. Surely, that is a two-way street. The person selling land is entitled to the best available price if afforestation has inflated the price of land in these areas. I can understand his point about people staying in the community who want to stay farming and who want services. However, someone selling land is entitled to the best available price.

Mr. Francis Cassidy

However, the market is being distorted by state aid. The market will pay whatever the market will bear; that is the economics in any field. A young farmer can apply for a bank loan for an extension to his farm or whatever. If he is going to plant the land, he will get a certain amount of credit whereas if he is going to try to farm, whether it is dairy, suckling or sheep production, he will get less credit because the figures do not add up and because of the sustainability of traditional farming methods as opposed to drawing down the loans over 15 years. The banks will favour a person extending their holding for forestry or will favour the people, the corporates, who are buying land. They can afford to give them more because they can sit back and wait whereas, as my colleague said, farm families need an income every year. In our area a neighbouring farm that was refused under the licensing system was sold for €2,200 an acre whereas if that had been approved for afforestation that would probably have been €5,000 an acre. That is the difference. That is the crux of the matter.

Mr. Brian Smyth

In addition, there is no real land-use plan as to what level of afforestation is acceptable to keep communities viable. A number of years ago University College Cork looked at how the farming euro contributes to the local economy. The farming euro in an economy is much stronger than the forestry euro because of the multiplier effect. If that farm remains open, the farmer is going to the local store, hiring local contractors, and buying diesel and other fuel locally. They are in and out spending money every day of the week, keeping the economy alive. When farmers plant the land, it is a fenced. The grant and some of the first- or second-year premium generally goes to the forestry company to plant and seal it up and nobody goes back near that again for ten years. Many people who are now planting up these farms are not resident and not spending any money in the local economy.

As the drive to plant increases, it is distorting the economy as well as the land market. It is good for everybody that land prices increase but it is when that creates other problems that it becomes a problem in itself. That is what we are concerned about. If ten farms are planted, that is ten families gone for two cycles - 80 years minimum. We are seeing exponential decline because of the drive to plant and because of the State investment in that. In the process of licensing, there is no consideration of trying to keep schools open, etc.

Our submission quoted our local authority in Leitrim. It stated that it now has little impact on the process of planning what is planted or on licensing. The forest roads used to be under the remit of the local authorities but this was removed in 2017. In 2011, plantations became exempted developments. The licensing for felling and replanting are outside the local authorities' remit.

There is no democratic input to the process unless you pay your €20 or €200 for the appeal. The grounds of appeal are so narrow that the considerations that we are explaining today are not examined in that process. This is all driven by public money, and a lot of it is focusing on these areas where there is a perception that the land is so poor that what else would you do with it anyway. It is driving our communities into the ground and that is why we are here today to explain how that happens. That is why we have started observing on these processes.

Senator Victor Boyhan

Despite the backdrop, I am in the west so I apologise for that, but this is important and therefore I wanted to link in to this meeting remotely.

I thank Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Smyth from Save. I am very familiar with them. I have travelled to Leitrim on many occasions and walked many of these farms and forests. I have talked to the communities up there, and I continue to actively engage with them and their public representatives. Three things come out of this for me. I fully support the Save community organisation and the people on the ground up there whose key issue is sustainable communities, proper planning and sustainable development. Given our remit, the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine, must look at how we support them. Most committee members represent rural constituencies and rural communities and it is important to emphasise that we must stand in solidarity with communities that wish to see their community develop in a sustainable manner.

The key ask here is if we are supportive of a plan. We need a land-use plan and there must be a balance between forestry, agriculture, tourism and other sustainable development, but there must also be support for the communities in the area. I hear loud and clear from Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Smyth and others that this is what they want to protect. They want a balance in terms of development.

I am interested in hearing some more evidence about the relationship with the organisations and Coillte itself in terms of ongoing consultation and negotiation and how it is receiving their concerns. Coillte is a State agency. There is also the private sector, which in many ways is a different animal. State aid exemption was touched on here this morning. Clearly, that is distorting the market. I accept what you say, a Chathaoirligh, about people's property rights, but we have bigger rights also, such as community rights, sustainability and commitments to regional development.

I would like the witnesses today to talk about their relationship with the county councils in Leitrim and Cavan in terms of the county development plan, whose objective is clearly to set out proper planning and sustainable development for their communities. What is their relationship with the local authorities? Have they endeavoured to make submissions to those development plans? How have they progressed? Have they been meaningful? Have they been well received by the executive of those councils and the elected members? I hear what the witnesses are saying. I have been in Leitrim in particular and seen what has happened. There is devastation.

Before I finish my questions I want to tell this story. I spoke a few years ago to a man whose three sons decided they wanted to buy 15 acres up on the hill. They went to the bank and the bank manager said, forget it lads, you are not going to get funding for this because I am already aware that some forestry company wants to purchase it and you will not compete with them. He said, whatever you want to pay, they will outbid you for it. That is devastating in itself. They were people trying to expand their small agricultural holding by 15 acres and they were told they would be up against a private forestry company and competing with it. That is the reality on the ground and that is not acceptable. That is not good enough.

I have three questions. Could the witnesses touch on their campaign in terms of seeking to have a land-use plan that gives balance to all conflicting demands or ambitions? Could they expand on their relationship with Coillte? Could they share with us how that has gone? What is the difference between the relationship with Coillte as a State forestry company versus other forestry companies? I say well done to the witnesses. They should keep going. I will give them one little bit of advice: they should keep the pressure on their elected representatives in Dáil Éireann and for that matter, their Senators in Seanad Éireann and sitting county councillors. They are there to represent people and their concerns and the interests of the community and the organisations in it. The witnesses are on the right road. They are doing something that is important for their community and ultimately it is about proper planning and sustainable development for their area. I commend them on that.

Senator Paul Daly

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their presentation. I am trying to get my own head around it, to delve into it a little further and to get a little bit more information. I am from the midlands, which is not too far away from Cavan or Leitrim. While the land might be a little bit better, the holdings would not be that much bigger. For one, I get where they are coming from and what they are talking about. I want to get my head around the issue. The witnesses are not anti-forestry. They are in favour of the right tree in the right place at the right time. Their major concern and main gripe is the corporate buy-outs. How does it work? Does a landowner apply for a licence and sell on his land when he has the licence or does he sell his land to a corporate entity pending the licence or does he plant and sell on afforested land? What seems to be the trend? How does it work? When people sell out, do they move on or are they just selling the land and stay around and work in another job or keep a small plot of land? Is the trend to just sell up and get out and is that the major issue in terms of keeping communities viable?

Do the witnesses know the current volume of licence applications in the Department from their respective areas? If they have an idea of the volume, are the majority of them in the name of private individuals or landowners or are they corporate entities? The main point for me to get my head around is how the corporate takeover works. Is it a case of buying land which they then plant or is it buying land with a licence or buying up land that is already planted? Where does the private individual get out of the circle?

Deputy Martin Browne

I just have one question. I too welcome the witnesses. We hear the problems they are facing in their area. Are they in contact with other areas around the country that are having the same problems, for example, with county councils in Tipperary or Cork? Is it the same problem that is being encountered right across the country or, as Senator Paul Daly asked, is it unique to the smallholdings in the areas the witnesses represent?

Mr. Francis Cassidy

A number of issues arise there. I will take them in rotation. First, gabhaim buíochas for the support. We welcome the support from all elected representatives and all bodies. We will talk about county councils and planning first. That is a strange one in that we have lobbied in each county for the inclusion of a proper land-use policy and forestry policy in each county development plan, but central government overrides the county development plans on a regular basis. It says this is Government policy and we are going to plant this land regardless of how many paragraphs there are in a county development plan.

It is a strange situation that Cavan County Council, Leitrim County Council and Kerry County Council can say a person cannot have 5 ft. windows in their bungalow, but if they are reduced to 3 ft. they will give planning permission while the person next door who is planting 49 ha does not need any approval. He can get a licence to plant 49 ha with very little oversight. There seems to be something intrinsically wrong in that situation. The entire visual landscape of the side of a mountain, hill or plateau will be changed by the planting of 49 ha and only a licence from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is needed. At the same time, the young couple next door who is building a bungalow cannot put 5 ft. wide windows in it.

They have to reduce them by 3 ft. or they have to change them, or they are only allowed one driveway into their house or whatever. There is something wrong there.

In regard to Coillte, the private companies and consultation, we only wish there was consultation. There is no consultation. The consultation is a business card in the letter box of an elderly lady. The consultation is ringing you up and saying we have bought the farm next door to you, we are going to plant it, we have the licence or we have applied for the licence and if you are not happy, we will plant three rows of beech on the outside as opposed to two. There is no consultation.

Mr. Brian Smyth

There is no requirement to put up notices for felling - that is noted in our submission – as there is with afforestation. One of our members took a case for judicial review and following that case, the forest service was obliged to instruct applicants to put notice on a property for afforestation, but that was not the case for felling. Once the licence is granted for felling, the notice goes up but at that stage, the consultation process is over because the job is done. What we have is foresters who are well-qualified and professional making decisions about the long-term use of our land and the huge industrial scale plantation that takes place on it. As it is exempted development, our local authority in Leitrim has spent something more than 300 hours in a 12 month period making submissions that were largely ignored. That was the case when I last spoke to the senior planner. Only certain plots are referred to the local authority where they are close to SACs or the road will exit onto a council road. Only certain projects are referred to the local authority.

The draft county development plan in Leitrim has reflected that. The consultation is open at the moment and on 27 April we have a significant submission to make. We engage with the local authority on a regular basis. Two of our members in Save Leitrim are councillors and as was another one previously. We engage with all the local councillors on an ongoing basis, and with the executive. We know them well. They more or less think in line with what we are seeing and doing in that regard. The draft county plan states that in certain protected landscapes it would be the preference of this local authority if commercial planting was restricted or prohibited altogether as such commercial forestry is exempted development and there is frustration within the local authority that this express objective cannot be realised. That is the executive of the local authority and the members saying they are frustrated by the lack of input that they can make into how the county develops and its future.

There is no land use plan. There is a commitment in the programme for Government to develop one on a national basis but they should be run out in each local authority. That would define the type of land use in a particular area and whether that land is to be maintained for communities to live in, for agriculture or for biodiversity. Our chairperson referenced the increase in the value of land. We are talking about high nature value land in Leitrim. These are small enclosed fields and they are very valuable for biodiversity. If the same value was put on that by Government and by the EU and paid for, as is paid for the afforestation, then the value would be seen in the price of land as well. It is valuable land. It may not be valuable in terms of the number of cows and the milk solids you can get from it or whatever but it is very valuable land to us because it keeps our communities viable. It has raised generations of people and, hopefully, will continue to do so. When you get to the percentage plantation level driven by these incentives from Government and now by corporate investors. The corporates are not just companies, they are farmers from other areas who are buying up land and planting it. It is a misnomer to think that the corporates are just faceless companies or the Canadian teachers' pension fund, for instance, or a Danish investment company. Many of them are based in Dublin and are buying large tracts of land. There is a mix of people there.

In regard to Coillte, locally we have a good relationship with it in the broad sense because it has been in Leitrim, west Cavan and other places and has large land ownership for many years. Certainly there are issues with Coillte in its wider sense, in terms of its pure profit statutory remit. That is not necessarily applicable nowadays where we have climate issues. The statute was developed in 1988 and certainly needs review to incorporate other agendas into the corporate remit of Coillte. Certainly it is doing things, such as Coillte Nature, but that is competing with local communities, for instance, for recreational funding. There is a wider concern with our group in terms of the drive for profit in Coillte. It is investing in wind and is taking out forestry and that is creating its own issues in the communities. We had the landslide, although not on Coillte property, but it was very close to an SAC, which has been overplanted, previous to the designation. There is a wide range of issues.

On replanting on Coillte's property nationally, 53% is on peat and there is a net loss of carbon when you plant and replant peat. The bogs in the midlands we have mentioned are now being protected and are being rewet and rewilded for biodiversity and climate issues. The same should apply to the properties that were degraded by planting them with conifers which in many cases did not grow. I saw some of them at the weekend.

Mr. Francis Cassidy

Mr. Smyth has figures. He will go through them and the employment myths around forestry.

Mr. Brian Smyth

I referred earlier to the farmer euro being spent in the local community. The farmer is continually spending money. Farmers get the annual payments for their schemes and they sell cattle, sheep or whatever. That money circulates, and the IFA report showed that it multiplies by four within the community. The same forestry euro multiplies by approximately 40 cent above the euro, so there is a big difference. The economies in Leitrim and other places are built on small farms. They may not necessarily be viable in themselves if one looks at it from a purely financial perspective, but they are maintaining viable rural communities. What is happening is that, while every farmer is entitled to the best price they can get, many of these people have died or have gone into nursing homes and their places have been sold. That is where much of the land is coming into play. The family is away and they are selling it or the farmer is no longer able and somebody else is applying for the licence on behalf of the farmer so it can push the value up and use the money to look after the farmer in the nursing home or wherever. It is very unfortunate that this is the case.

In terms of employment, the number of farms is referred to at the back of the submission we sent, if the Deputy has seen it. The 2019 study that was done in Leitrim by University College Dublin shows, although the draft county development plan shows a different number, that there are 309.3 full-time jobs associated with forestry and wood processing in Leitrim. Masonite Ireland is there. However, only 41% are related to Leitrim residents working, so that is people who come into the county to work there, like many of the contractors. I believe there are two contractors harvesting. They operate nationally, and it is a large-scale, industrial operation. It is highly intensive machinery-wise, so the numbers are small. A large portion of that work would be haulage, and that has its own issues as well. There are 127 full-time jobs relating to residents working in Leitrim on plantation and so forth.

We see job displacement with planting land. In the agricultural census of 2010, the average size of a farm was 25.1 ha. There were 3,673 farms in Leitrim. The average labour unit was 1.5 based on the annual work unit of seven hours, five days per week. Looking at that, we see a displacement in the land planted in that period of time of approximately 1,297 jobs out of agriculture, compared with what was created in the equivalent forestry. If one has forest farms, one is reducing the input of labour across the board. It is also downstream because that farmer is not spending money in the local co-operative buying wrap, getting a contractor in or going to the mart. One is reducing the economic impact by planting land. It is clear.

Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice

I have another two brief questions. When one looks at objections to felling licences in Leitrim and other places, although a lot of them came from that neck of the woods, the harm is done at that stage given that the trees are grown. Why do the witnesses think there were so many objections to the felling of the timber? The timber was grown. If it is grown, it is end timber. That is the first matter.

The Minister of State is appearing before the committee later. What is the witnesses' view of Ireland's targets? At present, they are looking to farmers even sowing an acre down the back or wherever under the eco-scheme. There is a big push for that, although what has gone on over the past few years in the Department has turned farmers against planting. What is the witnesses' view on that when they look at the figures in the carbon budgets that the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is obsessed with and in the climate action plan?

Mr. Francis Cassidy

The Deputy has raised a few interesting points. Like many things in life, if one were setting a model, one would not start from here. However, we are at this point. Unfortunately, in the current forestry programme and what seems to be talked about under Project Woodland and what has leaked out from the different agencies, it appears that the status quo is going to continue, except under a different name. The trees are only the by-product in the forestry policy in Ireland. The product is the premiums and the tax breaks. It is immaterial what people are planting. They could be planting wind bushes, but it is immaterial. It is all about the tax breaks, the premiums and the pension funds. It has nothing to do with sustainable communities.

The new forestry programme has to have the buy-in of local communities. It must have Kerry, Wicklow, west Cavan, Leitrim and east Clare. Otherwise somebody else will be sitting in a committee room like this five or ten years hence talking about Project Woodland and why it failed. That is the reality. We are not anti-trees. I can bring the members to my home farm and show trees that were planted in 1922 by my grandfather. We love trees, but we hate the Sitka nonsense that is going on. It is isolating the neighbour and cutting out the daylight. That is our problem. We want sustainable communities. We believe passionately in where we come from and in the people in our areas. We are representing them as best we can.

We want to see a better vision for rural Ireland. Forestry has a role in that, but it is not the saviour of Ireland, no more than it is the saviour of the carbon budgets. It is only a small part of it. People and communities are the future. That is where the problem of afforestation can be solved. The Minister of State can talk all she likes about different aspects of the afforestation programme, buy-in and the like, but unless one meets and talks to the communities and there are reasonable policies, one will not have the communities. One will only alienate them.

Mr. Brian Smyth

Carbon budgeting relates to Ireland's commitments, not Leitrim's commitments. The weight of the commitment that Leitrim has given is the land that has been taken out and planted and continues to be taken out every week. Somebody asked about the numbers. We watch the licensing every day. There is not a single day that there is no licence application and we observe as many of them as we can, and now as many as we can afford to as opposed to anything else. Obviously, that licensing system is still very flawed, but we will continue to use that to make the point. That is what we have done to date. With afforestation felling, the only way to fix the replanting issues is by observing the terms of the felling licences. Unless one does that, one will not fix the issue. It is incumbent on us to look at and observe them and appeal in cases where we believe it is necessary. That is the only thing that has worked to change the system for us so far.

Carbon budgeting is a national issue for which there should be a national plan. For land use, that should be county by county and everybody should have a commitment to planting trees of some sort in their areas, on their farms and in other places where land is owned. The burden of tree planting should not fall to vulnerable rural communities where everybody thinks the land is crap and that we should just plant it and clear the people out. That should not be a just transition to a carbon climate solution. The problem we have is that this is being dumped on us in places such as Leitrim, west Cavan, north Kerry, east Clare and Wicklow.

Deputy Matt Carthy

Apologies for being late; I was listening to the proceedings on the phone. It is an important voice that needs to be heard in the wider debate on afforestation. This committee agrees that forestry can play an important role in the future of agriculture and meeting our climate emissions targets. Sometimes, the third cog of that is missed, namely, that forestry should also be playing a part in good community development. As has been said, this means that communities need to be part of the process. It has been mentioned a number of times that there needs to be better community buy-in and ownership of the process in terms of what is happening in local areas. Do the witnesses have any proposals on how that can be delivered? What legislative changes would need to be made that would ensure that community voices are heard in the context of forestry plans for the future?

Mr. Brian Smyth

We need democratic input into the licensing system, as opposed to the decision-making being solely a matter for foresters. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is poacher and gamekeeper because it is setting the policy and licensing the system. The commitment is to advance and push the planting of more and more trees. It is priming the pump to do that, and pushing forestry into our area. We see that there are issues. The issues we see on the ground when that happens are not being addressed sufficiently in monitoring and enforcement, or when we raise concerns. The local authority is addressing them up to a point, particularly where there are water pollution and other issues, but it should not all be located within the one authority. We believe that licensing being solely the responsibility of the Department is an issue. We see the fact that it is exempt in development as an issue. We believe that should change in some way. The local democratic input is made through the local county development plan. The frustration is that the local authority does not have a say and cannot make its views on the county development plan known on the basis of what people want within the county. We want sustainable-----

Ms Teresa McVeigh

The cumulative effect of forestry is massive, especially in areas like where I am from. In my area, a lot of elderly farmers have passed away. It might be the case that a niece or nephew in a different country sells the land, and it goes straight to the forestry because they outbid any of the local farmers. The whole place is now sick of spruce. There is a massive cumulative effect of spruce everywhere. All the households are affected. There is no point in people putting up solar panels on houses because there is no solar energy.

Mr. Brian Smyth

It is the cumulative impact of multiplying small plots and then a drive by corporates to pack them and build scale in them. They are trading the land, even within the county, between companies. Certainly, they are issues. All the groups would suggest that Coillte's remit be looked at. It engages with communities to an extent, but it could be far more based on community input.

On the issue of felling, if there was a community remit, then they would be much more aware of what is happening. I was at a house on Sunday where people lost power for four days. Felling went ahead. One of the recent storms brought trees down on the line and cut the power to the house for four days. That was purely because ESB was watching the network. It did not have a proper licence and did not manage the felling to trim back along the lines before it started opening it up. It opened it up and two storms came in and took massive amounts of trees and power out. The inconvenience there is that the trees grow up and people lose their Internet and TV connections. There are all sorts of issues. Those are two of them.

There should be a statutory requirement to develop a land-use policy with proper consultation and input from the local authority which states that the area will not be planted or not planted any more. There are townlands now where the percentage of areas planted is in the 90s. When we were attending the forestry appeals in person, we were seeing on the screen the percentage of the areas planted. It is frightening in some areas, with 90% of the townland planted. When you get to that, who is ever going to go back to live there? Then the next townland goes, and so on. It is cumulative, as Ms McVeigh has said. That is the killer. In County Leitrim, we have the highest percentage planted. It is similar in west Cavan, parts of east Clare and north Kerry. It gets to a point where the canary in the coalmine indicates that there is a big problem here. Until the canary dies, people will say that it is grand and we can work away. What we are saying here today is that we want the members to listen. We want change. The state aid decision is driving plantation. If that same state aid was being used to deliver biodiversity and tackle climate change by funding farmers to plant for 25 for 30 years for purely carbon emissions, they would not have to fell the trees necessarily. They would not have to be looking for felling licences. Part of their land could be planted for those reasons alone. That would help support the price of land as much as it would for afforestation. Real thought in those things is needed. It will encourage people who have more valuable land in terms of finance to perhaps also consider planting that poor land.

Deputy Matt Carthy

For this committee and for decision makers more generally, it is going be about balance. I agree absolutely that there are some areas where there has been a proliferation. That needs to be accounted for in terms of how we plan for the future. We need to undo damage that has been done by very poor forestry and planning policy in the communities that the witnesses have spoken about predominantly. We also need to recognise that as well as forestry playing a role, wood is going to be required for lots of other things that we want to do, particularly in sustainable building development and all the rest going forward. The big quandary that I have is how we get that balance right and how we put in place the planning and legislative protections to ensure that communities' voices are heard and that communities are not overrun, while at the same time ensuring that the country is not without afforestation or a timber sector. I know it is not the witnesses' job - they are here to represent their communities and they have already mentioned a few matters that the committee can explore a bit further - but do they have any sense of how we can get the balance right in order that we can try to be all things to everyone in terms of the wider targets of any good strategy?

Mr. Francis Cassidy

I suppose we are going to have to be innovative going forward. There are lots of things that we could look at. The country is playing catch-up to where we are. We have 25% to 30% afforestation in some DEDs. Over the average of west Cavan, we are looking at 25% of the available land. Where does the sustainability come into it? Is the package of measures that we are talking about aiming to increase the afforestation? Do we need to pay an enhanced premium on what we call the better type land in order to bring those levels of afforestation from the 3% and 4% up to the 11% national average? Do we put a moratorium on areas such as west Cavan, Leitrim, east Clare and Kerry, and say that we are going to have no more afforestation there until we get the levels up nationally? We are going to have to be innovative. In my area, there is 30,000 ha in DEDs. I live beside two forestry plantations. I am in the middle of two of them really, with one on each side of me. Perhaps we could look at whether me and my neighbours should be entitled to any carbon credits in relation to excess on our vehicles. It is about looking at where we can go with this. Where is the buy-in and the dividend for the communities that have lived beside a Coillte plantation for the past 40 years? Where is the dividend for the farm families beside the plantations that have been shaded out?

Perhaps we can look at the excise on vehicles and reduce the carbon tax in relation to petrol or diesel. Can we be innovative? Can we come back and support those communities that are doing something for the climate, have 25% to 30% afforestation, are doing this nationally and are doing their bit? Can be put community centres there? Can we make sure that there is a Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, DEIS, school and a DEIS grant for every school in those areas? We have to think outside of the box. It is not beyond the bounds of possibilities that we come up with solutions. There are solutions there if we look for them. What we need is the will to incorporate them into the new forestry model.

There has to be a win for communities. Otherwise, there will be objections. It does not matter whether the licensing laws are amended because if communities are activated against a proposal and a solution is not found, they will try to do something about it.

Chairman

I thank the witnesses. They have put forward their viewpoint articulately and have highlighted the issues for communities where there is a high level of afforestation. They have made good points that the committee will contemplate and valid points about how to save a community with high levels of afforestation. I thank them for their presentation.

We will suspend while we invite the next set of witnesses, Mr. Teige Ryan, Mr. Patrick Bruton and Mr. Pádraig Egan from SEEFA.

Sitting suspended at 10 a.m. and resumed at 10.04 a.m.

Chairman

Members can only contribute if they are within the parliamentary precincts. I remind everyone that mobile phones should be turned off for the duration of the meeting.

Before we begin, I wish to bring to everyone's attention that witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to the committee. This means that witnesses will have a full defence in any defamation action for anything said at a committee meeting. However, witnesses are expected not to abuse this privilege and may be directed by the Chair to cease giving evidence on an issue. Witnesses should follow the direction of the Chair in this regard and are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that, as is reasonable, no adverse commentary should be made against an identifiable third person or entity. Witnesses who are giving evidence from a location outside the parliamentary precincts are asked to note that they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts and may consider it appropriate to take legal advice on this matter. Privilege against defamation does not apply to the publication by witnesses, outside the proceedings held by the committee, of any matter arising from the proceedings.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against any person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

The witnesses wish to split their opening statement in two. We will try to keep them confined to the clock.

Mr. Teige Ryan

Before I begin, I thank the committee for inviting SEEFA to speak about the issues facing the forestry sector. The committee will be well aware of the issues, given that this matter was before the committee an unprecedented six times in 2021. Unfortunately, many of the issues remain despite the committee's best efforts.

The climate action plan states "Afforestation is the single largest land-based climate change mitigation measure available to Ireland." Of a climate action afforestation target of 8,000 ha in 2021, only 2,000 ha were planted. The forest service's inability to meet programme for Government afforestation targets over for the past six years has resulted in a failure to plant 21,500 ha, which could have removed 8 million tonnes of CO2 from our atmosphere.

Today, we hope to discuss the approach from the forest service, which is further suppressing afforestation levels and seriously undermining confidence among landowners. In January, the Department outlined its plan to issue 5,250 licences for 2022, which it described as "highly ambitious". Shame on the Department. It was informed by the industry in 2021 that a minimum of 7,000 licences would be required in 2022 for the sector to function and retain current employment levels. We were therefore dismayed when the forest service ignored that advice and published a licensing plan that did not meet the needs of the sector. What an ambition. Seven hundred and fifty-nine afforestation licences remain in the system, with an average of only 12 being issued weekly. Some 60% of these licences have now been with the forest service for more than 13 months, and of all licences issued for 2021, only 12% were for afforestation. Forestry companies and businesses are seriously impacted by the Department's inability to issue enough licences for the industry to trade. The Department will claim that it has hired more ecologists and expects to see improvements in licensing output over the coming weeks, but how many times has the committee been told that? The reality is that nothing is changing. Is it not ironic that, with a Green Party Senator as our Minister of State, the industry is considering a planned protest outside this building for our right to plant trees, produce wood and maintain rural jobs?

Forestry nurseries have only survived because increased afforestation levels in Scotland of over 12,000 ha per annum presented a lifeline and an opportunity to export millions of saplings that would otherwise have been destroyed. This would have resulted in the closure of the nurseries and an end to a forestry nursery culture in Ireland, rendering all Government afforestation targets impossible for the foreseeable future.

The success in Scotland can be attributed to political will at ministerial level in respect of tree planting and full implementation of Mackinnon's recommendations on its licensing system. Political will and any implementation of Mackinnon's recommendations are something that we in Ireland apparently cannot achieve. The recent review of the regulatory system presents an opportunity for change and a chance to reverse arbitrary policy decisions that have the industry in its current state. However, the possibility of regulatory reform will again test political will at ministerial level.

Policy decisions, a dysfunctional licensing system and mismanagement at senior level have resulted in our once thriving private forestry sector going from planting 15,000 ha per annum 20 years ago to 8,000 ha ten years ago, and reduced to just 2,000 ha in 2021, the lowest level since 1946. This is completely against Government policy. The Department will claim a lack of interest among farmers for this reduction.

However, if these issues are to be addressed correctly, the Department must first accept the reasons for the decline, which are excessive delays in its licensing system, the shameful way landowners have been treated in relation to ash dieback and the obvious incompatibility between afforestation and the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, which has seen farmer planting decline by over 80% during the term of the green, low-carbon, agri-environment scheme, GLAS. Input from forestry stakeholders could prevent a repeat of this in the next CAP.

The Department’s assistant secretary who has the forestry mandate also has responsibility for GLAS. However, our sector was not notified or invited onto the CAP consultative committee at the outset. When the industry requested membership later, we were refused by our own Minister.

Do members believe significant changes are needed to regain confidence among landowners? Do they believe that significant changes are required to achieve our climate action commitments? Do they want to see new rural jobs such as seed collectors, nursery operatives, agricultural contractors, machine drivers, fencers, planters or maintenance crews - I could go on - created in their areas? None of these opportunities will be realised if we do not recognise the elephant in the room and deal with it quickly.

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Some 23,000 farmers have committed their most valuable asset, their land, to forestry, based on Government policy and incentives since the late 1980s. These are mainly first-generation forest owners. Many of these pioneers would now strongly discourage any farmer from engaging in forestry, due to the licensing scandal.

Our taxpayers have invested almost €3 billion in private forestry over the past 30 years. The Department, through hyper-regulation, poor policy and even poorer management are squandering this taxpayer investment and wasting the opportunity created by members' political predecessors. The opportunity is crystal clear in the most recent all-Ireland roundwood production forecast from the National Council for Forest Research and Development, COFORD, covering the period 2021 to 2040. The report shows the volume available from the private sector, mainly farmers in many parishes all over rural Ireland, increasing from 1.7 million cu. m this year to 3.5 million cu. m in 2030, ultimately peaking at 4.4 million cu. m per annum in 2035. This opportunity should be resulting in more jobs, increased economic activity and environmental benefit all over rural Ireland. The opportunity is being squandered because the Department has proven to be inept and remains incapable of issuing the licences that are legally required to permit the management and harvesting of this timber. I am certain the taxpayers of Ireland, members' political predecessors and the owners of these forests never foresaw a situation whereby their vision would be wasted by the Department in the scandalous manner we have witnessed over the past three years and continue to witness.

The same Department published a licensing plan earlier this year. Based on the dashboard at the end of quarter 1, we can measure how the Department has performed. Coillte, the semi-State forestry company with a balance sheet of €1.36 billion has been issued with 457 felling licences, which is 97 more than the projections issued by the Department in its plan. The private sector, mainly farmers, have been issued with 357 felling licences, which is 102 fewer than Coillte and 65 fewer than the projections issued by the Department in its plan. We in SEEFA have no confidence in the Department recovering this deficit throughout the remainder of 2022. To add insult to injury, in week one of April 2022, the Department issued 58 felling licences to Coillte and just 18 to the private sector. The rot continues and the inequity is apparent to everyone. The Department licensing plan in the case of felling licences to the private sector has not even survived the first quarter of this year. I ask members to not accept any answers that the differences I have outlined are due to weekly fluctuations, because the facts are obvious in the weekly dashboard.

We have forest owners with licences submitted to the Department for more than two years and need to harvest their crops to put children through college, to meet bills, to pay debts and to help with home construction for children. The obvious question needs to be asked as to why the Department, an organ of the State, is ahead of target in processing licences for another organ of the State, Coillte, while leaving private forest owners all over this country on the sideline and largely ignored. It may answer it is related to the quality of applications received from the private sector. As representatives of the private sector, we refute this completely. We have serious questions as to whether the felling licence applications from Coillte are put through the exact same process, procedure and interrogation as those which the private sector licences are subjected to by the Department. Specifically in terms of private timber, which I am addressing, can no longer be about what the Department can deliver; it has to be about what the private sector needs and the Department must deliver. Nothing else is acceptable. We know we need a minimum of 2,500 felling licences and a minimum of 700 road licences each year for the foreseeable future to mobilise the private timber.

There was a windblow event in Scotland in November last year followed by a run of smaller storms since then. In accepting Scotland is no longer in the EU, its regulators must still abide by regulations. Felling licences are also required in Scotland. The regulators received felling licence applications for 7,252 ha of woodland. Around 90% of all the felling permissions have been approved, with each felling permission taking an average time of 16 days to approve. This is a real case of the regulators responding to the needs of the sector.

The non-performance and failure of our Department has resulted in real damaged confidence in the forest sector, from growers to end users. Do members think a significant change needs to happen to try to regain that lost confidence? Do they want to see the new rural-based jobs this increased timber availability can create in their local areas? These direct and indirect jobs can be drivers, mechanics, carpenters, accountants, foresters or ecologists and I could go on.

This is all here and ready to go. Unfortunately, I am confident that we will not take this opportunity with the current management and situation. We will not harvest the almost 25 million cu. m available in the private sector between now and 2030 if we do not face up, recognise the elephant in the room and deal with it.

Chairman

I thank the gentlemen for their hard-hitting opening statements. Unfortunately, we have devoted much time as a committee to the forestry sector and I am disappointed that the representatives of the private sector in forestry feel they have to come in again to highlight issues within the sector.

There are a couple of points that I take out of their statements. Some 2,000 ha in 2021 was the lowest amount since 1946, at a time when Government policy is clear that we have to increase the level of afforestation. That demands serious explanation as to how we dropped to such a level. Some 25% of what is in the programme for Government is a huge issue that needs addressing.

The other issue is something that I focused on a lot is the farmers with ash dieback. This has damaged the confidence in the sector. I have been involved in farmer politics before I got into parliamentary politics. I have never seen a situation where farmers had a disease that was outside their control that they did not receive financial compensation for, whether it was tuberculosis, brucellosis or the dioxin we had in the pig sector. We had it in horticulture as well where there were different outbreaks of disease. This is the first time in my experience that I have seen farmers who have suffered huge financial loss, 20 to 25 years of growth gone down the Swanee with a disease, and not see financial compensation.

The other point that is galling concerns the thinning licences. Thinning is a mechanism to get a crop to fully mature correctly. I just cannot understand the fact that one needs to get a licence for that which is a management tool. The representatives from SEEFA made many strong points and I am sure many members will have questions to get elaborated on. We might take one or two together so we get everyone in.

Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice

First, I thank the witnesses for coming in. The representatives from SEEFA talked about the problems that are going on and the elephant in the room. They want significant change. In a few words, what do they call the likes of the elephant in the room or the problems? What is the change that they want? I would like to get an answer and just do quick-fire with them for a few minutes.

Mr. Pádraig Egan

A draft document has been seen by the farmer organisations.

Mr. Pádraig Egan

I do not think any of us here have seen it. Leaving that aside, I will try to respond along the same lines as Mr. Ryan did in regard to the plans in the nursery sector. As in the case of everything else that comes out of the Department, there was no consultation on that document. The Department references consultation but it does not consult. The Department's two senior inspectors and the head of environment and assistant secretary will push that out in whatever way they want, as they did in regard to the mid-term review and the reconstitution and underplanting scheme, RUS, all of which failed. The Department brought out a project plan and many other things, but it never consulted and they all failed.

I am fairly confident when the legislation Deputy Fitzmaurice is talking about is brought in, it will not deliver what we need and what we are saying today is required because the Department does not understand what it wants itself.

Deputy Matt Carthy

Some of the language our guests have used, such as describing the Department as inept and incapable of meeting its remit, is probably stronger than we have ever heard from any stakeholder group across most committees in these Houses. That needs to be heeded. Our guests have spoken about the elephant in the room, and I get a sense they believe the solution is essentially to get rid of the entire forestry section in the Department and start again. They will appreciate that is not within our gift, despite the fact some members might agree with them 100% on it. Our remit is to bring forward policy changes and suggestions. On the particular issues raised with the licensing backlog, what are the policy changes our guests need implemented to address that?

I am almost sure the Minister of State will later reference, and the Department references all the time, the fact there is such a high proportion of afforestation licences that are not utilised. What needs to be put in place to bring somebody who has gone through the experience of trying to get an afforestation licence, to receiving one to actually using it? That is the greatest flag this is a dysfunctional system, namely, people have gone through this process and then do not use the licences when they have them. I ask our guests for suggestions for how we can turn that around.

Senator Paul Daly

I thank our three guests for being here this morning. The Chairman referenced ash dieback at the outset but I would like to hear about this from the lads because we are inundated with representations about the effects of ash dieback and the ineffectiveness of the RUS. Our guests might give us a little insight into that from their point of view on the ground. The SEEFA opening statement mentions the incompatibility of CAP with afforestation and forestry. I would like SEEFA to elaborate on that a bit more. Mr. Ryan said SEEFA was from the CAP consultative forum. Will our guests go a little further in explaining how CAP and forestry might come a little closer together and become a little more compatible? Based on the figures SEEFA has given us on what is being planted, carbon aside, what effect will that have on our timber supplies in 30 years' time when what is planted today should be mature? Forget about carbon for a second. I am looking at it just from a timber supply point of view.

Mr. Teige Ryan

I will address the points Deputy Carthy raised. I would say we represent the feeling across the entire industry about the Department. We would not expect the committee to remove the whole forestry division within the Department. There are some very good people in the forestry division but they are not in management positions. The industry's sole problem is with the management, which, as my colleague said, probably boils down to two or three individuals who have been there for ten years.

Chairman

We will just stick to the Department in general. We do not identify individuals.

Mr. Teige Ryan

Okay. Deputy Carthy's concerns around afforestation are valid. On the policy changes that need to be done, you can come up with all the policy changes in the world but one thing that would make all the difference, which I think members are already aware of, is that no matter what we do, what regulations change or systems change, we are absolutely nothing if there are not statutory timelines built in for decision-making on applications. When an afforestation application is submitted, there should be a set time of 90 days or 120 days and the applicant knows how long it is going to take. At the moment an application is going into the system and getting kicked around from Billy to Jack into a black hole. Foresters are phoning up asking the Department for an update. We know from our members that in many cases they do not get the update. Emails are not replied to. Here is a statistic. Just 18% of licences for afforestation are approved within the 18 weeks set out in the farmer's charter. This is what leads to the reduction in the conversion rate. Farmers and landowners are forced out of the system through frustration. To answer the Deputy's question, timelines for decisions form the policy change that is needed and must be done.

Mr. Pádraig Egan

I thank the members for the questions. I am going to answer the Senator's questions but I might very briefly respond to the Deputy. I know I have to be careful, Chairman, about the three positions we were speaking about. There is nothing personal in it. We are out running businesses. We do not have time to be in here. We want to be out on the ground doing what we are supposed to do. We are in here because the Department is just not able to deliver. As Mr. Ryan said, all we want is a workable system. We would be happy if we got approvals within four or six months. Say the Deputy is a farmer who asks me to plant his land for him. I will meet him and we will go through all the application process and I will tell him everything that is good about forestry. However, I will want to get out his door before he asks me the question how long this is going to take. That is because I do not have a clue, and I do not have a clue because we do not have a workable system, a planning process or any right policies. Why is that? It is because of the people we just spoke about. It is nothing personal. Our businesses have been run into the ground by the same three or four who have been in charge of this industry for the past ten years. I wanted to make that point.

Senator Daly asked about ash. It is a serious concern. As we all know, ash is our favourite tree. We all love hurling as well and it is what we make our hurls from, but a lot of people planted ash here in the past 20 or 30 years. If you planted ash and you now have this ash disease, first of all, you have to ask where it came from. We are an island nation. Ten, 15 or 20 years ago a professor came to this country - I cannot remember exactly but we can look it up - and explained to the people that, down the road, ash dieback was coming across Europe from Latvia. We are an island nation. The prevailing winds go a particular way. We had a chance to keep Ireland free. The people in charge of biosecurity, that is, of monitoring diseases of trees and plants being brought in, are the same three or four people we were talking about in the forest service. They did nothing. They brought it in from England and they brought it in from everywhere. That is where the disease came from. They could say, or members could, that we are blaming them for everything but those are the facts of it. A professor came here 15 or 20 years ago and told them this. They took no heed of it because they take no heed of anything they are told.

Moving to the landowners the Senator talked about and from whom he is inundated with representations, let us say a landowner in Westmeath, where the Senator comes from, has planted ash and it is 20 years old and gets ash dieback. There is now a scheme called the RUS. The forest service again did not consult us or any other stakeholder and just pushed that out there. It is not fit for purpose because, as the Chairman said, it will pay for taking out and replanting the trees, but if you had 20-year-old forestry and you put a new sapling in the ground, you are back to day one.

There would be no income for the next 20 years under the RUS. It is not fit for purpose and it was just thrown out there.

I can quickly give a figure on that. Up to March 2022 or thereabouts, there were 608 applications for the ash dieback scheme covering 2,500 ha, which is nearly 6,000 acres. To date, only 186 approvals have been issued covering 600 ha. There are 422 applications still stuck down the road. It is typical that they are not being processed.

Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice

How long is that going on?

Mr. Pádraig Egan

I would say the RUS came in last year or the year before. It was June 2020.

Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice

In that time they have got through 186 applications.

Mr. Pádraig Egan

That is all that has been issued up to the end of March. Senator Paul Daly's comments raise another point about the RUS. If the ash must be taken out, there are not many alternatives to plant. The best alternative may be conifer and trying to get something for 20 years or 25 years. If somebody is going for conifer, as well as making a RUS application, planning permission is required. We all know what the planning permission process is like. The Secretary General of the Department came before the committee approximately six months ago and gave a commitment that he would take that matter up with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Dare I say it, and I will stand to be corrected, but I imagine that once he went out that door he has not thought of the matter since. The committee might ask him today.

Chairman

To be honest, we must get that clarified with the Secretary General.

Mr. Pádraig Egan

That is another problem with the ash scheme. I will move to CAP. CAP and forestry are like two different things. A CAP consultation committee, CCC, was set up when the new CAP was being discussed. Every farming and land-based organisation in the country, along with people outside farming, was put on it but there was not one representative from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine's forestry service. The people at the head of the forestry service, which we have mentioned, did not see it as worth their while to put somebody on the CCC to represent forestry. We requested to go on the committee through different organisations but we were told we did not need to be on it. The assistant secretary in charge of forestry in this country was also in charge of the previous green, low-carbon, agri-environment scheme, GLAS, and would understand the need to have somebody on the CCC. Nobody was put on it. At the last meeting here, Deputy Fitzmaurice asked why this was not done. The Secretary General did not allow a reply on the day.

The environmental scheme in the previous CAP was GLAS and it will be called something else in the next one. It will be the same procedure anyway. The forestry service will say GLAS is compatible with forestry and trees can be planted but that is not possible. We have gone through it and know that. In the four or five years before GLAS started, on average, 895 farmers per year were planting forestry on their land. GLAS was introduced in 2014 or thereabouts, and we have numbers from 2014 to 2020. In 2020, 100 farmers planted trees. That was a direct result of GLAS. I know that from being on the ground and some of the members will know that from being on the ground. I do not know how many times I went to farmers who wanted to plant when they were in GLAS. The truth is they could not plant. GLAS was competing with forestry.

Deputy Fitzmaurice touched on this a while ago. We were not allowed on the new CCC but the same thing will happen with the new scheme. That is what we see coming. The officials will tell us trees can be planted in forestry but it will not be possible.

Mr. Patrick Bruton

It was a good question on timber. I have already outlined that the forecast indicates an increase in volume to 4.4 million cu. m by 2035. By 2040, that will reduce to almost 4 million cu. m. The reduction in afforestation we have seen for the past 15 years just means the available volume decreases into the future because we are not planting enough land to bring up the volume again. That is just the bottom line. The irony of ironies in all of this is there is a Green Party Minister of State with responsibility for forestry who will preside over the lowest afforestation programme in 75 years. The same Green Party policies want to replace concrete and steel in home construction with timber. If we do not plant the trees, it is elementary that we will not have the timber.

I will make a small point on the CAP and GLAS, which Mr. Egan has covered very well. Nobody can argue with the fact that there were 48,000 participants in GLAS but the total number of those participants that planted land during the GLAS term was 682. That is 1.42% of the participants in GLAS that planted land during the scheme's term. How can anybody with a shred of integrity claim GLAS and afforestation are compatible?

Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice

How did they do it? Did GLAS apply to one part of a holding and the planting was on another?

Mr. Patrick Bruton

The Department continues to claim that GLAS and afforestation are compatible but they are not. GLAS is not a whole-of-farm scheme. Generally, however, when a farmer gets into a plan, he or she is in it for the five years. This is not a criticism of GLAS at all but rather a criticism of the compatibility between GLAS, which is an environmental scheme, and forestry, which at its heart is an environmental scheme. Yet, with a single person in charge of both, there were 682 participants from a total of 48,000 in GLAS who planted land. That does not represent compatibility.

Deputy Martin Browne

The findings of the Mackinnon report have not been implemented, or are being partially implemented. This is disturbing because we have heard about it time and again here. The Minister of State's opening statement is before me and she speaks about woodland working groups and how most of the issues identified are being addressed. There is talk that it will take time to train and bed in recruits but how much time and training is needed to bed in somebody to an industry that is falling apart at the seams?

Today we are again hearing that there has been no consultation but every Minister coming before us will try to persuade us, left, right and centre that there is consultation taking place with groups. There is another group before us today telling us there has been no consultation. The entire system must change and in the resolving of any problems, all stakeholders must be involved.

I have a couple of quick questions. The opening statements referred to Coillte and felling licences issued to it rather than private operators. Most recently, it was noted that in one week of April this year, 58 felling licences were issued to Coillte and just 18 were issued to the private sector. I have raised this difference between Coillte and private operators since the matter started being discussed at this committee. I have been given various responses, including one last May when I was told the Department did not want to get into a debate about Coillte versus the private sector. That debate needs to be heard.

In January, the Minister of State told me that in 2021, 1,345 private felling licences were issued and 1,500 were issued to Coillte, highlighting that overall there was no great disparity between Coillte and private operators. The figures were 47% and 53% for private operators and Coillte, respectively. Coillte received a greater number nonetheless. In January this year, when 3,348 felling licences were on hand, only 1,300 were for Coillte but 2,000 were for private operators. There is no doubt that Coillte licences seem to be shoved up to the front of the queue, as I said before. The Minister of State keeps denying that. Will the witnesses give us their view?

Senator Tim Lombard

I compliment the presentation that has been received. It is really powerful and frightening.

What are the biosecurity implications of importing timber to Ireland? The witnesses mentioned ash dieback and a beetle being brought in that affected the ash tree. Are the witnesses fearful that the biosecurity currently in the ports, with the imported timber, will have an implication regarding beetles that could affect the spruce? Could this impact on the ash industry and effectively wipe it out in the next decade or two if the biosecurity measures are not appropriate?

Mr. Patrick Bruton

In response to Deputy Martin Browne, we would like to make the following points on the consultation. New interim standards for felling and reforestation were circulated by the Department in October 2019. They immediately replaced existing guidelines at that point. When released, comments were sought for stakeholders. The intention was that the comments and consultation would be taken on board and that a revised and updated standard would be issued in December 2019. That still has not happened in 2022. We have serious questions about consultation, particularly this consultation. Did the Department follow the consultation principles and guidelines published by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in 2016? The likely answer to that is that Project Woodland is dealing with it, because that is the answer to everything. We would like that question to be answered. We have tried to get answers before.

Deputy Browne asked about felling licences. I fully agree with his statistics. To provide some support, in January, at the launch of the licensing plan, there were 2,023 private felling licences and only 1,317 Coillte felling licences with the Department. On 25 March last, there were still 1,883 private felling licences with the Department, of which 1,481 had been there for longer than 120 days. In that period, the number of private felling licences reduced by just 140. In the same period, the number of Coillte felling licences with the Department decreased from 1,317 to 868. That is a reduction of 449 felling licences, compared with 140 for the private sector. Does that prioritisation of Coillte felling licences happen by accident? It is not due to weekly fluctuations. It is the sidelining and ignoring of private owners all over the country to the benefit of Coillte. That is not a criticism of Coillte but of the procedures and practices of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

There is much more I could say about licensing, but I will move on to biosecurity. We are fearful and have every right to be. We have seen the damage that the beetle has done in central Europe over recent years. The imports to Ireland are generally from the pest-free area of Scotland. The Department has claimed that due to the issues with licences last year, it stabilised the sector in Ireland with regard to the availability of roundwood. If that is the case, why were imports from Scotland at peak levels in 2021? We can have the best biosecurity measures possible, but there is always a real risk, which we are fearful of. The irony is that the Department's reports prove that we have the timber in the country. We do not need to import it, but we are importing it because the Department is not issuing licences to harvest timber that we have in our own country. You could not make it up.

Mr. Pádraig Egan

I have a quick point following from Mr. Bruton's response to Senator Paul Daly's question. To give a simple example, in 2021, we planted 2,000 ha of forestry in the country, which is a quarter of the target. Maybe 1,000 ha of that will end up as roundwood in commercial sawmills around the country in 25 years. That 1,000 ha would be only 10% of what the sawmills require this year. In 20 or 30 years, as the Minister of State has said, we should be thinking timber and building timber. We will not have timber because we are not planting enough. The Minister of State launched an organic forum yesterday. Every land use stakeholder in the country was involved, including Teagasc and all the different companies involved in farming. There are 23 or 24 of them. No one from forestry was involved. The Minister would say that it is organic, not forestry. That is not true because organic farming and forestry are linked. The Minister of State is an organic farmer and she has forestry. There is a direct link. No one understands it better than her. My point is that in everything she does, she does not think about forestry. Forestry is not top of the table. That is another example, which happened just yesterday.

Deputy Martin Browne

Some €1,000 per hectare was given for 1,600 ha cleared under the original ash dieback scheme, but the process cost several thousand euro, so the scheme was clearly inadequate. Now we are seeing rising costs of diesel and so on. What impact does that have on the ability of foresters to deal with incidents of ash dieback when the contribution of the scheme is already so inadequate? What impact does the cost being faced by the contractors who help with this work in forests and woodlands have? What interventions would the witnesses like to see to assist with offsetting the costs? We have heard about the exclusion of contractors in the agri-sector from various supports.

Have the witnesses ever heard any reason, when they asked for membership of the GLAS or Common Agricultural Policy consultative committee, for not being included?

Chairman

Before Deputy Flaherty speaks, I have to ask if he is in the precincts of Leinster House.

Deputy Joe Flaherty

I am not at the moment. I am dialling in.

Chairman

Unfortunately, Deputy Flaherty will have to listen and cannot contribute. Sorry about that.

Deputy Joe Flaherty

Sitting suspended at 11.01 a.m. and resumed at 11.10 a.m.

Chairman

I thank the Minister of State for attending. I remind members to turn off their mobile phones for the duration of the meeting.

In this session we will hear an update on the forestry sector targets from the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Senator Pippa Hackett. The Minister of State and her officials are very welcome to the meeting. I call her to make her opening statement.

Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Senator Pippa Hackett)

I thank the Chair. It is good to be here this morning. I am joined by Mr. Barry Delany, director of forestry, and Mr. Kevin Collins from the environment section.

I thank the Chair and the committee for the invitation to address them today. I acknowledge the committee's continuing interest in forestry. I certainly welcome the opportunity to update members on progress in implementing the Department's forestry licensing plan for 2022. I also want to use the opportunity to raise other related issues that I believe are of interest to the committee.

Before we discuss licensing, I want to touch briefly on the implementation of the Mackinnon report. I know this is something close to the hearts of many committee members. Project Woodland was set up to implement the Mackinnon report. Through the good work of the working groups, most of the issues identified by Mackinnon are being addressed and are at different stages of implementation. Some of the recommendations have been implemented. I will refer to this work later in my statement.

On the question of licensing, I am pleased to report real and substantial progress in improving the Department's output. The request by the committee and Chair during previous engagements was that the Department should aim to issue approximately 100 new licences every week. I am delighted to report that this is being achieved. In total, we issued more than 4,000 licences last year, which was a 56% increase on 2020. This included 2,877 felling licences, with a volume of nearly 8.5 million m3. This is the highest volume issued in a single year. Last year was also a much improved year for forest road licences, with 264 kilometres of roads approved in 2021. These increasing trends are welcome. However, I am aware of the need to continue at pace this year, and in particular, to increase further the number of afforestation licences issued. At the beginning of this year, we published the forestry licensing plan for 2022. This contains a target of 5,250 new licences to issue in 2022, which is a year-on-year increase of 30%. We are delivering on this. As of last Friday, we had issued 1,426 licences so far this year, which is marginally ahead of our target of 1,414.

Our plan is to achieve a 100% increase in output for planting licences in 2022. With this in mind, the Department recently recruited a number of external ecologists who will, for the present, focus exclusively on afforestation. Once these ecologists are trained and bedded in, I am confident that the output of afforestation licences will increase significantly to meet the annual target set out in the licensing plan. With regard to felling, we have reassigned some staff to focus on private felling licence files. This change and the recruitment of ecologists focusing solely on afforestation are intended to ensure that we meet our annual targets for both categories. We will keep the deployment of resources under review, as we have for the past two years, and as the year progresses we will make further changes that may be necessary to ensure that we can respond in an agile way to any issue that arises.

I am aware there has been a focus in some public commentary on the number of licences issued in individual weeks. While this is understandable in all of the circumstances, my focus is on meeting the annual licensing targets. It is inevitable, given the nature of the licensing process and the specificities of each application, that there will be some variability in numbers from week to week. We are certainly working on having more consistency in the pace at which licences are issued, and to a large extent we have achieved this. We are also making significant progress on addressing the backlog in licences. So far this year, we have issued 1,426 licences and received 563 new applications. We are processing licences at approximately three times the rate we receive new applications.

All of this means that there are 3,860 licences in total on hand with the Department, a significant reduction from this time last year, when the figure was around 6,500. This is evidence that the improvements in our systems and the additional resources that have been put in place are having a positive impact and will bring us to the stage where licences are issued in a timely fashion. The Department, members of the Project Woodland working groups and the project board continue to work towards this goal, building steadily on the gains already achieved. I acknowledge the commitment of all involved in the process. At this point, my Department is on course to have no outstanding felling licences predating 2021 by end of the second quarter of this year. To achieve our aim to increase licensing this year we will also need the help of the sector. I understand the Department has more than 700 further information requests still outstanding for afforestation, roads and felling. I encourage applicants to respond as quickly as they can to these information requests.

The committee has taken a keen interest in the ash dieback reconstitution and underplanting scheme. We have 593 applications on hand for a total of 2,402 ha. A total of 189 approvals have issued for the scheme for a total of 620 ha. However, the Planning and Development Act and associated regulations provide that the replacement of broadleaf high forest with conifer species, which is screened in for appropriate assessment, requires planning permission from the relevant local authority in addition to the requirement for a felling licence. The Department is engaged in discussions with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage on this issue. I am advised that there may be a route to amending the legislation to allow replacement of broadleaf with conifers for sites under 10 ha without the requirement for planning. We will update the committee on this matter in due course.

I am also very pleased that with the passage through the Oireachtas last month of the Animal Health and Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2021, the Forestry Act 2014 has been amended to facilitate the planting of native trees in areas up to 1 ha in size without the requirement for a licence. This will be part of a scheme established for this purpose. The scheme will also facilitate tree planting along watercourses. The terms and conditions of the scheme will ensure that all planting will be in accordance with all environmental requirements. We are developing the scheme and will engage with relevant stakeholders. This will complement existing efforts to increase afforestation and will encourage the establishment of small areas of native trees that are important for biodiversity, landscape and water quality.

I said at the beginning of my statement that I would refer to some of the outputs under Project Woodland. The end-to-end review of the licensing process has been completed and recommendations arising from that review have moved to the implementation phase. The draft external regulatory review is being examined by the working groups and the project board. The picture it paints is one of a complex web of EU regulation and case law. Unfortunately, there are no silver bullets. There may, however, be some solutions that can help to improve processes and make them more efficient but none are simple. The Project Woodland project board has asked the working groups and the Department for their views on the draft report and will work with both to develop an action plan.

Work is continuing on the development of a new shared vision and strategy for trees and forests in Ireland. Through the Project Woodland process we are engaging with the public, local communities and stakeholders in a variety of ways. We recently launched a public consultation survey on the future of forests in Ireland. It is open to all and can be accessed on the Department's website until 27 April.

We have already received more than 1,000 responses. I encourage members of the committee to share the details of the consultation with their constituents who may wish to make submissions. This is a critical time for forestry, and I look forward to seeing the results of this consultation. Irish Rural Link has also undertaken some consultation on our behalf and has submitted a draft of its Assessment of Attitudes by Communities and Interested Parties on Forestry and Woodlands, which is currently being considered by the members of the forestry policy group.

In addition, quotes are currently being sought for a training needs analysis specifically to address the needs of the licensing process, while a tendering process will commence shortly to engage an external consultant to carry out an external organisational review of the Department's forestry division.

Furthermore, a communications strategy is being developed and is due to be finalised shortly. I have also signed off on an additional payment to contribute to the cost of environmental reports required to accompany licence applications. This is currently awaiting sanction from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

We are also exploring the option for developing better communications between the Department's foresters and applicants, by implementing a pilot for pre-application discussions. Ultimately, this is designed to improve the quality of applications and smooth the passage of applications through the system once submitted.

We have made significant progress through the increased resources and efficiencies that have been introduced in our forestry division, and I am confident that we will reach the targets set for licensing this year. I know how important it is to the whole sector that we maintain momentum and continue to build on the progress made to date. I am confident that while we still have much do, we are taking the steps necessary to address the delays in licensing and to eliminate the backlogs.

It is also clear that, for a variety of reasons, we need to encourage farmers and landowners to plant more trees. Forestry has a critical role to play in contributing positively to climate change mitigation, and to the improvement of biodiversity and water quality. It also has a central role to play in improving farm incomes as part of the agricultural enterprise, and in the development of the rural economy and job creation. The work currently under way to develop a new forestry strategy will be vital to our success in increasing afforestation. We understand how important it is to ensure that our licensing system is fit for purpose but if we are serious about forestry, we have a collective responsibility to ensure that we get better at communicating its many benefits not only to farmers but to citizens and to industry. With this in mind, we will be working with stakeholders, through Project Woodland, on the development of a communications strategy to help build a culture of forestry among farmers and landowners. Consistent negative messaging around forestry, while perhaps understandable at times in the past, is undermining a sector that has so much to offer rural Ireland. We need to work together to change this narrative if we are to be successful in creating a strong culture of forestry in Ireland. I am particularly interested in hearing the views of the committee on the issue. I thank members for their attention, and I am happy to take questions.

Chairman

I thank the Minister of State very much for her opening statement. As she says, this committee has devoted a lot of time to forestry since I became Chairman. It is the topic that has got most attention from this committee, which shows how worried we are about the sector and its future.

I will make a couple of points before I open up the meeting to members for questions. We have had two engagements with stakeholders this morning, coming from two different perspectives on the forestry sector and issues relating to forestry. We planted 2,000 ha in 2021, the lowest since 1946. The programme for Government is clearly set as four times that target. Future generations will question what went wrong in Ireland around 2020 that we had such a failure with the planting of trees. The Minister of State and I might have differences as to how we achieve our targets to reduce emissions in our fight against climate change, but we both agree that forestry has a significant part to play in that regard. As a farmer, I am deeply concerned that forestry is not playing the role it can in our battle to reduce emissions and in carbon sequestration.

Ash dieback disturbs me. There is a lot of it in my county and in surrounding counties. I have been involved in representing farmers for many years and it is the first time that I can ever remember that farmers have not got compensation for a disease completely outside their control. The list, which includes brucellosis, tuberculosis, TB, bovine viral diarrhoea, BVD, foot and mouth and dioxin in pigs, is endless. There was always a compensation package for those affected. A grant has been put in place for clearing, which has been poorly subscribed to, as there are difficulties with what can be replanted. As a matter of urgency, the Minister of State must consider giving a financial package to the affected farmers. A recommendation has been made by this committee that the very least that can be done for those people who have been affected by ash dieback is that they will have access to premiums going forward for 15 years if they replant their land. They have suffered significant financial hardship. They have lost 20 to 25 years of timber growth, which was going to be a pension pot for many of the growers. In a lot of cases, ash was put on reasonably arable land that would not normally be used for forestry. It was done by people who wanted to provide a pension for themselves and the fact is they have suffered a great loss. I urge the Minister of State to look again at the recommendation the committee made on a premium for those affected by ash dieback. I would like her to give it serious consideration.

The Minister of State focused on licences. There is still a backlog in that regard. Another issue I wish her to address is the fact that it is clear from stakeholders that there is a bias in favour of Coillte in the issuing of licences. The figures clearly show that. The dashboard is extremely informative. Committee members are very appreciative of the dashboard, which keeps us up to date every week. Last week, the licences were three to one in favour of Coillte over private operators. That is creating significant concern and we would like to see it addressed.

Another issue that really bugs me is the fact that you have to get a licence to thin your crop. Thinning a crop is a management tool to allow a crop to reach its full potential. When you get permission to plant, a management tool to allow your crop to reach its full potential should not have to go through the licence process again. We must do whatever we have to do, legislatively, to get that anomaly removed as a matter of urgency. That would play a pivotal role in reducing the delays because we would have fewer licences in the system if thinning was removed from the process. It baffles me how something that is a management tool to allow a crop to reach its potential has to get licence approval. I just cannot get my head around it. They are the points I wanted to make. I know members are very anxious to put questions to the Minister of State. I will take two members at a time, starting with Senator Paul Daly and Senator Lombard.

Senator Paul Daly

I have a couple of notes and you have ably covered some of the points I want to raise, Chairman, in particular regarding facts that were given to us this morning. One point is that in 2022 we planted only 2,000 ha, which is the lowest plantation since 1946. How can we explain to future generations what we were at in the early 2020s? The programme for Government clearly states that we will plant 8,000 ha. We get caught up here a lot of the time talking about licences and the number of licences, but it is hectares of saplings planted on the ground that will determine the outcome and that is what we will all be judged on at the end of the day. We are talking about a mere 2,000 ha. At the end of April, the nurseries will plant seeds to provide the saplings for 2025. Can the Department tell them how many seeds they need to plant and how many trees will be planted? How can they predict? When they read the programme for Government, it states 8,000 ha, but the fact is that we only planted 2,000 ha last year. It is very damning. I am taken aback by the fact that it is almost considered a success story in the presentation that there will be no felling licences pre-2021 in the system by the end of the second quarter of 2022.

That is saying openly that there will be licences that are 18 months in. I do not see that as a win in any way.

As the Chairman mentioned, I would also like the Minister of State to comment again on the ratio of licences that are being issued between Coillte and the private sector. The silver bullet came when I was on the previous agriculture committee when the Minister of State's predecessor introduced the Mackinnon report. There are 21 recommendations in the Mackinnon report. A similar Mackinnon report was done in Scotland. They implemented all the recommendations of Mackinnon. As we were told this morning, Scotland's forestry sector is flying at the moment and if it were not, the seeds that were sown here by our nurseries would have had to have been dumped. They were exported to Scotland, however, as there is such a demand because they implemented the Mackinnon report in a three-year period.

We commissioned Mackinnon then to do a report here based on that and now we are doing umpteen more reports and analysis. Project Woodland groups are meeting. We heard of one group that has already met 25 times. We were told that three of the recommendations of Mackinnon have been implemented. Where are the other 18? When will they be implemented? When, if ever, will we reach the target of 8,000 ha per annum, which is actually only 50% of what we were on 20 years ago?

Senator Tim Lombard

Regarding the 8,000 ha, which is in the programme for Government, and Senator Paul Daly also mentioned this topic, can the Minister of State give me her view and timeline for when she believes we will reach the 8,000 ha? It is a principle of the programme for Government, which is nearly two years old at this stage. Taking into consideration that the Taoiseach will probably change in the next few months and we are literally going into the second phase of the programme for Government, does the Minister of State believe we will reach that actual target of 8,000 ha planted in the next three years? If so, will she be giving that indication to the nurseries this morning that this is what she believes will happen in the next 30 to 35 months?

Could the Minister of State give us information on the importation of roundwood? I appreciate she may not have the information; I do not want it this morning. Could she inform the committee in her own time of the amount of roundwood being imported into Ireland at the moment? Is she happy with the buyer security that is happening at the ports taking into consideration previous issues regarding biosecurity and what happened with the ash? What does she believe is the long-term plan and timeline for when we will not need to import roundwood? It is in many ways a bizarre scenario that we are importing wood into Ireland with sufficient wood growing that we just cannot harvest. What are the Minister of State's timelines for when there will be no need for roundwood to be imported?

Timelines have continually been mentioned in applications. Is there any process whereby we will have timelines tied into the Department? If a person goes for planning in a local authority, the local authority is tied into a timeline for when it will report. Even when the local authority gives that person further information, there is a timeline again for when the Department responds to him or her. That timeline is in law when it comes to a planning process. It is definitive. One cannot move outside the eight-week process or 28-day process when it comes to further information. When does the Minister of State believe that kind of process will be brought forward in order that we can bring confidence into the sector?

Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine díospóireacht - Wednesday, 13 Apr 2022

Afforestation and the Forestry Sector: Discussion

Mr. Francis Cassidy

Mr. Francis Cassidy

Mr. Brian Smyth

Mr. Francis Cassidy

Mr. Brian Smyth

Mr. Francis Cassidy

Mr. Brian Smyth

Mr. Francis Cassidy

Mr. Francis Cassidy

Mr. Francis Cassidy

Mr. Brian Smyth

Mr. Francis Cassidy

Mr. Brian Smyth

Mr. Brian Smyth

Ms Teresa McVeigh

Mr. Brian Smyth

Mr. Francis Cassidy

Mr. Teige Ryan

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Pádraig Egan

Mr. Pádraig Egan

Mr. Pádraig Egan

Mr. Pádraig Egan

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Teige Ryan

Mr. Teige Ryan

Mr. Teige Ryan

Mr. Pádraig Egan

Mr. Pádraig Egan

Mr. Teige Ryan

Mr. Teige Ryan

Mr. Teige Ryan

Mr. Teige Ryan

Mr. Teige Ryan

Mr. Teige Ryan

Mr. Pádraig Egan

Mr. Pádraig Egan

Mr. Pádraig Egan

Mr. Pádraig Egan

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Patrick Bruton

Mr. Pádraig Egan

Mr. Pádraig Egan

Mr. Teige Ryan

Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 13 Apr 2022