There is a “clueless and out-of-touch mentality” from government ministers when it comes to the current crisis in the forestry sector, a TD has claimed.
According to the Independent TD for Laois-Offaly, Carol Nolan, ministers with responsibility for forestry sector “do not understand what is needed to help the sector is to survive its current crisis”.
Deputy Nolan also claimed there is mounting alarm within the private forestry sector that the current Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue and the Minister of State for Land Use and Biodiversity, Pippa Hackett, “do not actually understand what is needed if the sector is to survive its current crisis”.
The TD for Laois-Offaly recently visited Laois Sawmills in her constituency, and said it confirmed her view about how ministers are dealing with current forestry issues.
“I simply cannot overstate the level of concern that is out there, and it is growing with each passing week and each passing month.
“The borderline uselessness of the ash dieback scheme and the ‘suggestions’ from Minister Hackett that the industry move toward hard wood with all of the decades long delay in returns that this entails, are all symptoms of quite frankly dangerous levels of political incomprehension,” Deputy Nolan said.
Forestry licenses
So far this year, 52 applications for afforestation licenses have been received and a total of six have been issued, according to the most recent figures from the forest licensing dashboard.
The dashboard shows a further 207 applications were submitted for forestry road licenses and 25 were issued so far this year.
It shows a total of 1,125 applications have been put forward for felling licenses and 1,316 have been issued.
The number of licenses issued and the amount of afforestation is down in the first four months of this year compared to last year.
According to Deputy Nolan forestry organisations “now feel they may as well be banging their heads against the wall”.
The Climate Action Plan has set out an afforestation target of 8,000 hectares per year but the deputy has warned that there has been no progress made on any potential solutions that industry members have put forward to ministers.
“Sooner rather than later we are going to arrive at the threshold of serious job losses and massive reputational damage worldwide.”
“I take no pleasure in saying that, but the fact is there is simply no way for any sector to survive this level of bureaucratic nonsense and poor ministerial oversight without incurring major hits and profound financial instability with all of the social and environmental knock-on effects that will follow,” Deputy Nolan said.
Meanwhile there has been no further update on the government’s progress to secure European Commission approval for Ireland’s proposed new €1.3 billion Forestry Programme.
Minister Pippa Hackett told the Dáil last week that the Irish government’s submission was in the “hands of the commission now”.
“It will work internally. The submission will be sent to the Directorate-General for Competition and it will then engage internally with other directorates-general on it.
“While we have not heard anything from the commission yet, we expect to hear very shortly. We may still have queries to be addressed,” she added.