Despite the planting season reaching its “peak time” now, frustration rises over ongoing forestry licensing issues as no afforestation licences have been issued so far this month.
Figures published by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) show that an area of 66ha has been planted in January, and 17ha of trees have been planted this month.
As Ireland’s Forestry Programme 2023-2027 is still subject to EU state aid approval, the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine has heard that there is now a situation where no new planting applications can be submitted.
‘Land grab’ or timber sector ‘monopoly’?
The deal between Coillte and Gresham House to establish a €200 million Irish Strategic Forestry Fund to purchase 12,000ha of new and existing forests continues to be heavily debated.
During the debate, committee member Deputy Matt Carthy raised the question whether a “land grab” or monopolising the timber sector may be the “logic” behind the arrangement.
Coillte accounts for circa 70% of the Irish log supply market, and the purchase of existing forestry would only serve to increase the state’s dominance and control of log supply to the Irish market, the Irish Timber Council (ITC) has warned.
ITC member Mike Glennon said that a “perfectly functioning market” would consist of equal supply from the private sector and Coillte, warning that, under the deal, more money coming into the market will mean higher land prices.
“The objective is that 70% of the fund is to buy existing forestry which is not providing more trees but just changing the ownership. That is providing a fund backed by the state to buy it off farmers.
“We just can’t understand how that can be positioned from a climate change perspective when 70% of it is to do with existing forestry,” he told the committee.
Forestry targets
The “realities” of how the government intends to deliver afforestation have become more apparent to farmers and rural communities, the farm forestry committee chair of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), Jason Fleming said.
Increased investor planting has corresponded with a growing level of opposition to forestry, he said, as land is being bought up by invisible investors, and the vast majority of grants and premia leave the local economy.
Independent TD Micheal Collins said a “sense of absolute frustration” at the institutional inability of the department to overcome or remove “bureaucratic inertia” emerged from the meeting.
“Indeed, after hearing from our witnesses, the words ‘streamlined and functional’ are not terms that anyone would ever associate with the Irish forestry service’s approach to this crisis.
“Yet that is precisely what we all need the service to be,” Deputy Collins said.
IFA deputy president Brian Rushe said the government must address the ongoing issues within the sector and give greater assurances to farmers in order to achieve planting targets.