Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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I remind members and witnesses to turn off their mobile phones. Before we begin, I bring to their attention that witnesses giving evidence within the parliamentary precincts are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence given to the committee. This means that witnesses have a full defence in any defamation action for anything said at a committee meeting. Witnesses are, however, expected not to abuse this privilege and may be directed to cease giving evidence on the Chair's direction. 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 comment should be made against an identifiable third person or entity. Witnesses giving evidence outside of 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 of the proceedings held by the committee, of any matters arising from the proceedings.

The purpose of the first session of today's meeting is for the committee to resume examination of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine's response to ash dieback. The committee will hear from the following representatives of Limerick and Tipperary Woodland Owners Limited, LTWO; Mr. Simon White, chairman, Mr. John O'Connell, vice chairman, Ms Mary McCormack, ash dieback committee, and Mr. John Reardon. I welcome the witnesses to the meeting. I will allow our guests five minutes to read their opening statement and then we will proceed to a question-and-answer session. I call Mr. White to make his opening statement.

Mr. Simon White:

I thank the Chairman and committee members for the invitation to explain why the recently announced ash dieback scheme, which the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Senator Pippa Hackett, and her Department officials are promoting as the final solution to ash dieback, is inequitable and unworkable. I will introduce our representatives and give a brief introduction as to where we are now. I will explain the difference between the independent ash dieback report recommendations, and what is in the scheme the Department have come up with in response.

The scheme was designed without discussion with stakeholders, of whom the growers are the most important group. At the first meeting of the task force, the Minister's appointed chairman, the assistant secretary, Mr. Paul Savage, stated the new scheme was not designed to solve the problem by implementing the recommendations of the review, but that they had allocated a sum of money and that was the end of it. The Department then fit what had to be done within that budget. Since it is impossible to pay for what has been recommended by the review, the result has been that large numbers of affected ash growers have been arbitrarily excluded from the scheme and it has been falsely promoted that the reconstitution of those left eligible to apply for the scheme can be achieved. The chairman was adamant that not another penny was going to be spent on the scheme and that the task force's job was to confine its scope within the parameters already clearly defined.

The vast majority of stakeholders invited to partake in this task force expressed the view that it is not possible to accomplish the tasks set out within such a restricted framework. This initiative is doomed to fail, as every other initiative the Department's forest service has come up with to deal with the ash dieback has failed before. I will explain why this is and will show what is needed to provide equity, reinstate these dead forests and rebuild confidence in growing trees on private land.

This is LTWO's fifth time presenting to the committee, as leading representatives of the ash plantation owners throughout an unnecessary prolonged crisis since 2019. We are very sorry that we have to come back before the committee as members must be as frustrated as we are by the way the crisis has been mismanaged for so long. The committee has expressed this frustration previously, it should have been dealt with before and we are sorry to be back. We are grateful to the committee members from across all political divides for their understanding and continuing support. For those new to the committee, I will give a little background and apologies to those who are already aware.

Ash dieback is an imported disease that should never have been allowed onto this island on infected plants. There is an onus on the State to provide assistance to those affected. It is a unique position in forestry that owners of land planted in trees are compelled by law to keep their land under trees no matter what catastrophe affects them. The complete loss of such commercial crop, as well as inefficient means available to deal with this loss, has created an urgent crisis that has enormous implications for the future of forestry in Ireland. It has awoken awareness of the increased vulnerability of trees to diseases, especially in this time of climate change. From the early 1990s, farmers were strongly encouraged by the forest service and the Minister at that time, to grow ash for profit. It was promised that forestry was on an equal footing with all other major agricultural enterprises, with equal support and advice. Those who planted ash were assured that the protection from diseases was the Minister's responsibility and would be looked after by the forest service. Those who devoted their land to growing trees, especially ash for hurley making, would reap attractive benefits, which would be equivalent to a substantial pension and a business to hand on to subsequent generations. The State support promise came to nothing and those who were pioneers in growing trees commercially in this country, were left high and dry as the ash crisis evolved.

Ash growers are very angry and rightly so. The official response to the disease killing our ash trees has been misguided and poor throughout all of the past 12 years since it was imported. As soon as problems arise, the forest service changes the rules and the support for growers disappears. This is recognised across the industry as a major cause of the erosion of all farmer confidence in growing trees. The essential elements of what the independent review recommended in resolving what it describes as this ongoing national emergency are: first, the cost of site clearance and regeneration should be borne by the State, with any residual value from the timber remaining with the landowner. The current clearance grants of €2,000 per hectare, excluding VAT, appeared reasonable in the main, but additional exceptional costs should be considered for particularly challenging sites. Second, the cost of replanting must be covered by the State. A bespoke ash dieback re-establishment annual payment is required. The payment should be consistent with the general rates available under the new forestry programme. All ash growers must be eligible for all schemes under the new forestry programme. Lastly, the Department should explore the potential for a once-off ex gratia payment to be paid to each landowner as recognition of the absence of an effective scheme between 2018 and 2023.

The scheme that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine forestry service put to the Government and sanctioned is actually a pretence of implementing these recommendations and I shall explain how this is the case. The clearance grant in the scheme is restricted to €2,000 per hectare, without alluding to the recognition that it can cost a hell of a lot more. The actual cost, as recognised by the reviewers, ranges from €2,000 per hectare for very young sites, which are relatively easy to clear and prepare, to more than €7,000 per hectare for older plantations that require specialist machinery because of health and safety issues dealing with large, dangerous tree felling and the significantly more timber handling involved. This means that there is a serious shortfall in money allocated to accomplish clearing and site preparation. While the cost of replanting is covered in the scheme, the cost of completely different ongoing management and maintenance to establish these new plantations, taking into account the likely plant failure rates in re -establishment, is not covered, leaving another serious financial shortfall. Whereas it is claimed by the forest service that all ash growers are eligible for all schemes under the new forestry programme, this is not so. They are ineligible for the premium elements in those schemes, which are what make them a viable option to anyone considering applying for them. Land has a value based on its ability to generate annual income and its potential range of uses. Under this scheme, the land under these replanted ash plantations is rendered incapable of providing any income for as long as it takes the trees to grow to maturity. Because the landowner is compelled to retain the land under trees, there is no alternative potential land value, no use. Therefore, the scheme renders this land worthless to the owner but of significant value to the State. This is a land grab by stealth, and forest owners end up prisoners of the State on what used to be their own land.

The one thing that the designers of this scheme can be commended on was that they came up with an innovative method of paying for losses by use of a climate action performance payment, CAPP. However, the amounts being given under this payment are inequitable. Growers with ash were prevented from salvaging healthy ash trees, which compounded their losses between 2018 and 2021, because of rules set by the forest service and the fact that the service was in total disarray with a licence backlog. This payment was recommended to compensate for this compounded loss to growers. However, the method of "one fix fits all" is inappropriate because this loss is dependent on the age of the trees. Whereas a €5,000 payment may be deemed acceptable to people with young trees, an equitable comparative amount based on age is different, as is presented in the table we have provided. For plants of nought to ten years, €5,000 per hectare is okay. However, for ten to 20-year-old plants, €10,000 per hectare would be more like it. For plants of 20 to 30 years it should be €15,000 per hectare. For plants of over 30 years, and they are there in large numbers, it should be over €20,000 per hectare.

Furthermore, a stunning feature in this plan is that a large percentage of people who have lost ash planted under state aid schemes have been deemed ineligible to apply for this amended scheme. Many people planted substantial blocks of ash as a component of a conifer plantation set aside for biodiversity and they are now suddenly deemed ineligible to apply for this amended RUS scheme. People in this category, who applied for the RUS scheme up to April of this year, were promised that if they did so they would benefit from any future improvements brought in on the scheme. They now find that promise is being denied them. Quite rightly they are seething with anger. The contributions from those invited to partake in the first meeting of the task force identified that 27% of the reduced 15,000 ha of eligible land to apply for this scheme is under 1 ha, and another 25% of the area is over 25 years of age. When the forestry company representatives among the task force were asked if they considered it a viable commercial proposition for them to tender for the work of clearing and replanting these sites under the restricted terms of this scheme, they admitted that it was not worth their while getting involved, as the small plantations and the older plantations are more expensive to clear due to lack of economies of scale and increased health and safety risks respectively. This is a startling revelation. It begs the question as to what now happens to the dead plantations that are excluded from this scheme and what happens to those that are not worth the while of the professionals expected to carry out the work.

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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I am sorry, Mr. White, I am going to have stop you as we have to go to a vote. I will suspend the meeting and we will be back as soon as we can.

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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We will resume in public session. I apologise for the vote but that is democracy.

Mr. Simon White:

There is no need to apologise and I thank the Chair. I had started to allude to the fact that so many people have been excluded from the scheme and this revelation been quite startling and begs the following questions now. What happens to the dead plantations that are excluded from the scheme? What happens to those who are not worth the while of professionals, expected to carry out the work, getting involved with?

Out of the original 26,000 ha planted under state-aided schemes fewer than 6,000 ha, and I would say a hell of a lot less than that but a very small proportion, have been taken out already or applied for under ash dieback schemes to date. Another 5,000 ha are now deemed ineligible. Out of the 15,000 ha the Department states are limited to being eligible under this amended reconstitution and underplanting scheme, RUS, it would appear that in the case of over 50% of that group, they will say it cannot be done. That leads us to ask, what happens in respect of something in the region of over 12,000 ha? This scheme can only deal with another very small proportion.

The dictatorial stance taken by the Department and the Minister, in rigidly sticking to this unworkable plan, ignoring the actual reviewers' recommendations, displays an extraordinarily poor grasp of the knock-on effects of taking such a stance. The reality is that if this scheme fails to resolve the ash dieback crisis satisfactorily, the forest service is a dead duck. As the Department continues to treat forestry support completely differently from the support it gives to other agricultural enterprises, no-one in their right mind, with land on which he or she might like to plant trees, will sign up to planting, which is exactly what has happened during the whole life of this Government.

Who is going to plant trees with an obligation to abide by rules that the Forestry Act allows the Department's forest service to recommend the Minister change at any moment it wishes? The people who planted ash back in the 1990s are the forestry pioneers of this nation. By treating such an influential group in forestry in the way it has, the forest service is destroying the foundation of our private forestry industry. Everyone aware of the way tree growers have been treated will continue to steer clear of forestry until the situation is rectified. How ridiculous is this?

The Government purports to be environmentally concerned. We all now understand the beneficial potential of growing substantially more trees. Trees mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions, improve our carbon footprint, supply many environmental benefits such as biodiversity, habitats, pollution filtration and oxygen production. However, there is a cultural malaise in the Department that is causing an inability to see that the regulation and control of forestry, under its command, is strangling an enterprise it states it wants to succeed.

The review made other very significant points: ash dieback is a national emergency and needs to be dealt with urgently; the process for dealing with the issue needs to be simplified and support the principles of the forest strategy so it needs to be equitable, consistent with State and EU law and customer-centred in supporting communications and advice to those customers. Moreover, it is imperative to rebuild the lost trust and confidence in state-aided private forestry and there is a natural justice argument for people with tree crops to be treated similarly to other primary producers, which is not the case at present.

The length of time to design and introduce a scheme to implement its recommendations, since the review report was submitted to the Department last September, shows just how the Department and the Minister have no concept of this being a national emergency. Those watching their plantations die before them every day are disillusioned and very angry.

What about simplification? One only has to read the 34 pages of terms and conditions attached to this scheme to realise that anyone would need a PhD in form filling to understand the hugely complicated wording and its implications to the applicants. The imposition of unreasonable terms in this scheme, such as the staggered payment of this climate action performance payment, CAPP, over four to five years, has an enormous effect on destroying the trust and confidence of farmers in the forest service. Why impose three unnecessary applications through a forester on this payment and delay it?

The question raised by other forestry groups as to whether the forest service, under the direction of the Department, is capable of regulating and administering deserves serious consideration. We are now informed that the administration cost per hectare of forestry, under the Department, has risen from €668 per hectare to €7,400 per hectare, which is elevenfold. This is astonishing and questions the value for taxpayers' money. It is now appears that, without a huge increase in planting, something that seems more and more unlikely, the majority of the €1.3 billion allocated to the new forestry programme will be returned to the State's coffers unspent, apart from a large chunk used to pay for an overstaffed and relatively unproductive forest service. Maybe setting up a separate forestry agency to oversee forestry is the way to go, as these people are looking for.

If we do not sort this ash dieback issue quickly we will not make climate change mitigation targets. We are committed to these targets and will face fines of a magnitude in the region of €3 billion, which is a sum that will pale into insignificance the sums needed to address the shortfalls in this scheme.

It is obvious that the Ministers and the Department are not interested in changing this scheme. Mr Savage, the chairman, made that abundantly clear at that task force meeting. Therefore, it is up to us to persuade the politicians to bring this change about and to help us do so. That is why we are appealing to the committee. A general election is not too far away and this issue need to be dealt with by everyone here. Many more voters in rural Ireland are affected by ash dieback than most people realise and there are dying ash trees on every road in Ireland. Each grower suffering its effects has a large family cohort of voters, who are very aware of and angry at the way this issue has been disgracefully neglected. They voiced their concerns outside the gates of Leinster House a couple of weeks ago and one could see the anger that was there.

To conclude, we would like to put forward the changes we consider must be introduced without delay. First, the payment per hectare for clearance needs to be increased in line with the age of plantation being cleared and prepared. We see the most effective and efficient way to do this is to have the forest service contract with those who are to do the actual clearance, forestry companies and contractors, so that the landowner is not involved in this, and the residual value of the trees cleared must be left with the plantation owner because the companies are taking them at the moment. Second, the CAPP payment is an innovative mechanism thought up to overcome the hurdle of constricting state rules, and I say "Well done" in that regard. The concept of the CAPP should be expanded to cover an upfront payment according to the age of the trees, as explained earlier, and to give an ongoing income equivalent to an afforestation grant under the existing forestry programme while these plantations grow. It can be done; the mechanism is there.

There should be consideration of an overall restructuring of the regulation of forestry in Ireland. The mismanagement within the Department and its forest service which is illustrated by its failure to achieve a significant increase in afforestation despite stated Government policy needs to be addressed. The numbers employed in the forestry industry has fallen over the past two years from 12,000 to 8,000 and we have lost 30% to 50% of forestry machinery due to catastrophic delays in processing applications to carry out work in forests. Private forestry in Ireland is being strangled by bureaucracy. We propose that there be a sworn legal inquiry into what has gone wrong, what is wrong and who is responsible for this.

Due to climate change we are facing a significant increase in risk posed by imported diseases into our forest industry. The bark beetle is knocking on our door and so on. We propose that our national phyto-security be strengthened as a priority over ease of trade. We also agree with the review recommendation that there be a greater sharing of the resulting effect of diseases between State and forest owners. Recent changes place most of that risk on the forest owner.

Finally, every inch that was planted originally in the state-aided schemes must be eligible for a new amended scheme if this is to be equitable.

I thank the members for their attention.

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Mr. White for a very comprehensive opening statement. He has outlined a serious number of issues. I call Senator Boyhan.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I thank Mr. White and his team here today. I will be brief and just make some points. I do not really want to ask any questions because Mr. White has made abundantly clear his absolute frustration and anger, which are justifiable and understandable. He has got the message over clearly again. I note this is his fifth presentation to the committee on forestry issues generally. In his opening statement he apologised but he does not need to apologise. We are here to listen and to advocate for him and do our best for him. I want to reassure him of that and say that on behalf of all of the committee.

Mr. White touched on the issue of confidence and the shortcomings of the sector. Why would anyone tuned into this meeting tonight want to get into forestry after hearing the litany of issues Mr. White spoke about? Of particular concern is the dead plantations and they are excluded from the scheme. What a crazy situation.

I hear his call on these issues, as do we all. He says there has been mismanagement by Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and its forest service, which is illustrated by its failure to achieve a significant increase in afforestation despite stated Government policy objectives. I fully concur. He also says the numbers employed in the forestry industry have fallen in the past two years from 12,000 to 8,000. What is the basis of those figures?

Mr. Simon White:

Those are figures from the Department of agriculture and the Minister of State.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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That is alarming in itself. We are meant to be going up in terms of forestry but we are declining from 12,000 to 8,000, a loss of between 30% and 50%. That is exceptionally disappointing for the sector.

On private forestry in Ireland, Mr. White clearly articulated how it is being strangled by bureaucracy. I understand what he means by that.

I support his call for a sworn inquiry. One of his asks is for a sworn legal inquiry into the ash dieback scandal to examine what went wrong and ultimately who is responsible. I think that is the big challenge in the whole issue of forestry. I support that and it is worthy of support. I also strongly support the review recommendation that there should be a greater sharing of the resulting effect of disease between the State and the forestry owners. That is valid.

Mr. White referred to strengthening the phyto-security process. Will he touch on the weaknesses of that process? That is where many of the problems are. How this was allowed into the country is a great scandal in itself and its policing. Will Mr. White share some of his understanding of how that happened?

Mr. Simon White:

One of the fears people in private forestry have is that there has been huge investment in conifers, which is the commercial tree in Ireland at the moment - Sitka and Norway spruce – and they are the most vulnerable to the bark beetle. We have seen what happened in ash dieback - everyone has seen it – and we are now facing the same sort of thing. We saw how ash dieback got in as a result of the lack of phyto-security. Take the type of phyto-security we have now. Licences are given and so on and there is supposed to be inspection at the port so that this disease will not come in. When you get down to it, however, the thousands of tonnes coming in cannot be inspected properly. Even in Scotland, where we are importing from, they state they cannot guarantee that the bark beetle is not there already because it is on their doorstep, 100 miles away, and it blows in the wind. We are terrified of what is going to happen and if it does happen we will be in the same boat as we were with ash dieback but it will be a much bigger problem. That is only that disease. As a result of climate change, we will be susceptible to many more diseases.

We will have to grasp the nettle. We cannot just grow native trees in this country. We only have five or six of them. We will have to look at the whole range of different species of tree and we will have to import them but we will have to import them, as was recommended by the Department’s own service years ago at the turn of the century when it said that it needed a quarantine system. We do not know that a plant is infected when it is first inspected but if one plants it in a nursery in a quarantine environment for a year, there is a good chance of it showing up. We did not do that with ash dieback. That is the sort of thing we need to do but we need to do it and we need to grow our trees in a different way. This business of monoculture which we did before left us open to disease whereby if a disease came in and took out our ash then a whole forest was gone. On the Continent it was always planted as a intimate mix. Even in our native tree-planting scheme, it is ridiculous because there is planting in blocks. One plants a block of oak and this and that, and again disease comes in.

It should be an intimate mix, but if you do that, you have to have a completely different way of planting, dealing with and managing your trees because you cannot use big machinery to wipe out everything. You have to pick your trees and look after them. It is different. It is about putting in the infrastructure, and that is what the Department needs to do. It should put the infrastructure in place instead of, as it did with the ACRES scheme, telling everyone to plant hedges when nobody had thought of where the planting material was going to come from. We had only 700,000 plants but we needed 10 million, so it could not be done. The Department needs to put the infrastructure in place and there needs to be some clear thinking. It needs to talk to the people on the ground who are used to growing trees and know what needs to be done, but it is ignoring us.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I thank the representatives of Limerick and Tipperary Woodland Owners Limited for coming here and sharing that information. We do take it seriously and will follow up on it.

Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent)
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I welcome our guests from Limerick and Tipperary Woodland Owners Limited. This is an issue throughout the country. When I was canvassing recently, many people raised with me the difficulties they have experienced. A large number of people have put their personal savings into this and were hoping it would be something for the future. Many have been advised and supported to go into forestry, and this is a disaster for many of them. It looks as though there needs to be an inquiry, although, I am afraid, nothing our guests are requesting is being adhered to. I kept note of the people in my constituency who had spoken to me about ash dieback, and when I heard about the compensation package, I rang them to tell them about it and asked them to come back to me. They came back to me to say that it was not adequate and that was a complete disaster in the context of what they felt was necessary. There has been a debacle over forestry since this Dáil came into being in 2020. We have been hopping from one disaster to another, with nobody at the top able to manage it.

Our guests said the clearance grant is €2,000 per hectare and that it could cost up to €7,000. They suggested the most effective and efficient to sort this out could be to have the forestry services contracted with those who carry out the clearance. Has any progress been made on that issue? Could it happen?

Mr. Simon White:

I do not see why it could not because all it requires is an invoice, if the services contract with a contractor to do it. The contractor is saying it cannot do it for €2,000 and, therefore, there needs to be some innovative way of dealing with it. If we take it on under this scheme, we will become liable for the shortfall, and why would we put ourselves in that position? We cannot do so, and we cannot advise our members to do so either.

I might hand over to Ms MacCormack to answer the rest of the Deputy's questions.

Ms Mary MacCormack:

I am delighted to have the opportunity to appear before the committee again. It has been at least eight or nine years since I first came here to speak about the fears I had for the future of ash trees in Ireland, given the evidence in other countries in Europe was frightening. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be back here in 2024 to highlight how little constructive action has been taken. Our environment has never been in such great need of trees as it is today, but ash plantation owners have been treated with indifference by the Government. Many of our members believe that the politicians who sit at the top table, each and every one of them, are equally culpable for the state of our ash woodlands. The latest scheme introduced by the Minister with responsibility for forestry is the final straw, as far as we are concerned. We have waited six years for permission to manage our plantations, clear the dead trees and apply for licences to remove trees. We have waited since the spring of 2020, when the last reconstitution and underplanting scheme, RUS, was suspended pending a review. There were several schemes prior to that, including underplanting the dead ash, believe it or not, with saplings. All these schemes were deemed unworkable by the Department and were suspended.

We are continuously asked where the problem lies and who is really to blame for this. Is it the Government, the EU, the forestry service or the Minister? That all depends on who you are talking to on a given day. In my opinion, there is an urgent need for a revision of the whole Forestry Act. It is far too dictatorial and must be made much more farmer friendly. It does not encourage enterprise in any shape or form. It ignores the fact forestry is how we earn our living, that we have committed our land to forestry and that forestry is the sole income for many people. We are not hobby farmers. This is how we have chosen to use our land, and there is so much emphasis nowadays on land use, how important it is and the carbon stored in it.

The way we have been treated is so far removed from reality. Farmers who had the vision to recognise the value of trees to the environment and had the courage to go ahead to plant on it should at least be treated with a lot more respect, and the word "respect" has cropped up in recent times everywhere I have gone and with every person I have met. They say there is no respect for them, their land or the work they have tried to do. We are entitled to earn a living. No other section of the agricultural industry is prevented from earning a living and told it cannot do this or that. The universe is spinning on its axis from the threat of global warming and pollution to the air we breathe. The Forestry Act 2014 is ten years old but, with the exception of a few tweaks here and there, much of it appears to be 100 years out of date to most forest owners.

Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent)
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I appreciate Ms MacCormack's detailed reply. In my view, the buck should stop with the Minister. The Government has let this issue roll on since 2020, and well before that. That it has come back with a package that is just not viable or workable for the people out there is an insult. All I can say is I will do my best to keep up the fight for them and will keep in communication with them.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I thank our guests for the detailed opening statement they provided to us. Having read it and listened to it being put on record, I do not have many questions left but I want to get some more detail on a couple of points that were made. The changes to the scheme as it previously existed were put together without any engagement with the likes of our guests' organisation. How were they conceived, therefore? Who came up with them? Are our guests aware of anyone having been engaged with? Where did the changes come from? Obviously, they did not come from the review group, given that the recommendations from the latter have not been carried through in the changes to the scheme that have been announced.

Mr. Simon White:

Forgive me, but the only way I can answer that is with my own supposition. One thing I do know is that nobody was consulted among the stakeholders on the ground. This was done by the Department of agriculture in consultation with the Department of Finance. This is a supposition, but I suspect they came up with a sum of money and tailored this scheme within that confined area. They knew they could not fix the job fully, so they have excluded large numbers of people, again to fit the scheme into the budget. Anything that would have expanded the budget was out of the question, but the awful thing about that is that they never took the exclusions into consideration because they did not discuss them with us.

They did not discuss with the forest companies that there are all these people for whom it cannot be done. I have asked the forestry companies in that room if they would go down to Waterford and then up to Cavan to take out 1 ha with their big machines. They will not do it. They are not interested. Then when it goes to the older plantations, I asked the companies if they would take that on and their answer is they would not. The reason for this is that it will cost them so much more money. They are in the business of making money. They know the farmers do not have the money. They cannot come up with the money to do it so it has to be provided by the State. There is €2,000 to be put against a job costing €7,000 per hectare so they are not going to take it on. Not only that but they know the risks are that there would be very large failure rates and that when they finish the job, the owners are then going to come back after them saying their crop is not what it should be and that it is supposed to be 90% at the end of it but it is not. The owners will say the companies are then liable and they do not want to take on that liability.

The Government put approximately €79 million into the scheme and the fact is that half of that will go back because it will not be spent. Even with that, the reality is that it is costing an awful lot more money, but it is very small amounts of money compared to the billions we are going to pay in fines if we do not plant trees. However, if it does not sort out ash dieback, as everybody in the forestry industry knows, people will not plant. It is not happening because it is not in their interests. The schemes need to be simplified. This is so complicated that it would banjax anybody to look at it and to work out how they were going to deal with this. It is just putting people off. Members will forgive me for this but I have to say it. It makes us wonder if there is a major effort to get private owners out of forestry. We seem to be run out of it. We see they way we are being treated and the likes of Gresham House and things like that are being fostered by the State agent, Coillte, and such like, to take over land from farmers. It is being taken over. It is like a land grab because these people are so demoralised. They see no future and they are actually being forced to sell their land. That is where this thing is going. Then the State is expected to give the sort of subsidies it should be giving to the rural community to these big entities and that money will go out of the country. We need to work with our rural communities. We need to hold Ireland together. We cannot all move to the cities. If we do, we will have nothing. What will our tourist industry be? If you do not manage the farmland and forestry, what are you going to have? You are going to have secondary succession. The country will be in a mess. We saw what happened in the Burren when they decided the Government was not going to do this. We need to foster the management and the best people to do it are the landowners at the moment. We are being driven out of business by this.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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On the exclusions, these are based on the cohort for whom the area they have that is affected is too small and is not worth the while of the person who has to do the clearance. nor will it cover the cost, and then those who are excluded from the scheme as it currently is. What does Mr. White think the figures are, or can he even give a rough percentage of the number of people who will be locked out of the scheme? Some just will not engage with it because it is not worth their while. They cannot afford to clear it on the €2,000, so they are not going to get involved. Why should they have to use their own money to clear up a mess that was not of their own making? They are not happy with the scheme so they will not engage. I know it is perhaps hard to say but what percentage of people would Mr. White say are excluded from this scheme?

Mr. Simon White:

The Deputy is asking me an impossible question at the moment because I am not privy to the actual figures. We were told we would be given those figures by the task force. They have not given them to us yet. I can only speculate that probably 20% or 30% are definitely ineligible and that is unacceptable. Mr. Reardon may want to take that question.

Mr. John Reardon:

I planted 20,000 young ash plants on my farm 34 years ago, with a view to having a sustainable business when they matured. Right now, I have nothing. It is gone. They were mature trees. I minded them for 30 years but four years ago, it became obvious that these were dying and management was shut down. There was no more to be done. They are now in a situation where there is 2 m high blanket of briars covering the site and out of the briars are the dead trees. They are absolutely worthless. I asked a contractor what he would charge me to clear the site in such a way that when you put in young saplings, which are only the size of your little finger, that they would be able to grow and pass the test at four years that they are still growing without vegetation. In order to clear that site, when all the trees are taken out and stacked at the roadside, he then has to bring in a thing called a mulcher, which takes a 200 horsepower tractor like Jeremy Clarkson has - the big things - and €10,000 per hectare is what he would charge me. The Department is saying I can have €2,000. That leaves me with a shortfall of €8,000 which, when multiplied by 8 ha is €64,000 that I would have to borrow. After having borrowed that, I am only allowed put in species such as birch, alder and those sort of species. They are not commercial crops. I will never, ever see an income - in anybody's lifetime, grandchildren included - out of those. They will never show an income. It is all for nothing; 34 years' work down the drain.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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Does Mr. Reardon have any idea, what he would have expected if that all had gone to plan? Obviously, the Department at the time was encouraging people regarding their pension pot, investing, doing the right thing, and growing ash, which is what Mr. Reardon did. He did the right thing.

Mr. John Reardon:

The plan was a very feasible one. After about 30 to 35 years, the stems are basically in three parts. The bottom metre is used for making hurleys. That is a premium product. The second 4 m - roughly - goes into planks, 2 in. thick, 12 in. wide. This is another premium part and those planks are used for furniture-making and all things like this. They make good money. The top and last third, which is the lowest-value product are the branches, the crooked ones, and the ones that just do not make it. They are used for firewood, which also makes good money because ash is the best firewood going. After 35 to 40 years, you are looking at a situation where you might take out the equivalent of half an acre per year, in different trees, and that would give you an income of maybe €10,000 or €20,000 per annum. That continues forever because the oncoming trees grow. You just keep on going back and going back. It is an ongoing business. It is a pension where you do not have a pension. That was the way I looked at it and that was very feasible according to the Teagasc advisers and the agricultural advisers. This system works. It works in Norway and Sweden.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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It was going to be a very sustainable and long-term pension for Mr. Reardon-----

Mr. John Reardon:

A sustainable and long-term business.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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-----and it was sold as guaranteed, secure and all of that.

Mr. John Reardon:

Yes.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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Lastly, the other figure that jumped out at me is the administration cost per hectare within the Department.

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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Apologies Deputy Kerrane. We have suspend the meeting as there is another vote.

Mr. John O'Connell:

According to the headline of an article in the Irish Farmers Journal on 4 May, "Forestry costs at Department rocket to reach €7,338 per hectare".

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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Is that €7,388 per hectare?

Mr. John O'Connell:

Yes, per hectare. It just shows the waste of taxpayers' money.

Mr. Simon White:

That increase was over ten years.

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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Where did that information come from? Was it through a parliamentary question?

Mr. Simon White:

It was published by the Department.

Mr. John Reardon:

I think it was from a response to a freedom of information request from a journalist.

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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It seems to be an extraordinary escalation in costs.

Mr. John O'Connell:

It is.

Mr. Simon White:

It is understandable because the Department is administering fewer and fewer schemes. It is supposed to be planting 8,000 ha per annum but if only 2,000 ha or 1,600 ha are being planted, the administration costs per hectare will be an awful lot higher, and that is what is happening. If the Department was doing its job and enticing people to grow trees, it might be more efficient. It has become completely inefficient. The Secretary General of the Department, Mr. Brendan Gleeson, stated at the committee relatively recently that people were not taking up the schemes and were not being enticed to do so, and that there was nothing the Department can do about that. It is the job of the Department to make the schemes attractive enough for people to take up. There is something wrong there and it needs to be looked into.

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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I am afraid I was the only dunce to come back after the vote. The other members must have known another vote was being called. I will have to suspend again.

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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The witnesses were explaining the huge increase in administration costs before the sitting suspended for the last Dáil vote. As Chair of this committee I have not asked any questions this evening. I do not need to because unfortunately, I understand the issue fairly extensively. The fact so much land is ineligible is inconceivable. I will go back to Deputy Kerrane because she was in the middle of her questions when the sitting suspended.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Cathaoirleach. I was asking about the incredible increase in the administration costs by the Department. Will the witnesses comment further on that and what they imagine is behind such an alarming increase?

Mr. Simon White:

I will ask Mr. O'Connell to cover that.

Mr. John O'Connell:

It is an absolute disgrace that this sort of money is being spent on administration. It should be going into planting trees which are so necessary in this climate crisis we find ourselves in. That is all I have to say on that. It is not acceptable. The only people making profit from forestry is the forest service. That is where the money seems to be going and it looks as if, as a certain statesman said, the definition of success is to face failure after failure without a loss of enthusiasm. This is what the public is being presented with. To say we have solved the problem of ash dieback is a fabrication. It is spin of the highest order. We are the producers and countless numbers of us throughout the country have been left to drift without any consideration. We are the pioneers who contributed to biodiversity, the environment, public good and climate mitigation without any recognition for the past 30 years. We have sequestered vast amounts of carbon dioxide, whereby 26,000 ha of ash has sequestered 4.225 million tonnes of carbon. That has now been squandered. Converted into euro, it equals a vast amount if that is multiplied by 56. We pay carbon taxes on the price per tonne of carbon and we do not get any benefit for the carbon we are sequestering. The way we are being treated is an absolute disgrace. Criminals would be treated better.

They would be given the benefit of the doubt. The forest service was responsible for bringing this disease in to this country. We live on an island with prevailing westerly winds. It is a windborne spore that travels no more than 30 km. It had very little chance of getting into this country without coming in on imported plants. It was an absolute disgrace that was allowed in. It is tantamount to vandalism. I have 10 ha of ash. I have a 15 ha plantation that was used as an example to all and sundry of best husbandry. I would be ashamed now to allow anybody in. It is a danger to my family, myself and anybody entering. There is no solution to this. The solution should be immediate. The forest service was responsible for phytosanitary security. This goes back to, for instance, 1991, when Mr. Diarmuid McAree, the chief forestry inspector in charge of the forest service, said the objective of the forest service is "To develop forestry to a scale and in a manner which maximises its contribution to national, economic and social well being [he well-being has been totally forgotten about, along with the health and safety and mental anguish people are facing with this problem] on a sustainable basis and in a manner which is compatible with the protection of the environment." We have contributed hugely to all of this aspiration.

Then, the protection of the forest estate from pests, diseases and other threats involves the implementation of the forestry aspects of the EU planned health directive. The forestry inspectorate is supposed to survey the forest estate in respect of forest health, condition and carry out inspections of forest plant material and timber imports to ensure compliance with EU forest protection regulations. Is it doing that? I wonder. Again, there should be no major delay in providing an efficient service to farmers on all forestry matters. It has totally fallen down on every aspect of what it has set out to do, yet we are the ones who are penalised. We are penalised at every hand's turn. The position we have been placed in is utterly unacceptable.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I have one final question with regard to the €5,000 climate action performance payment, CAPP, that was announced. That was maybe the biggest change or it was new, certainly with regard to what was announced in the changes to the scheme. With the changes the LTWO has proposed, obviously, a lesson for everyone here is that the scale of the issue is actually dependent not so much on the area but on the age of the trees. Based on the figures Mr. White outlined in the table in his opening statement, could the CAPP be used as some kind of ex gratia payment? The recommendation in the review was that it would be looked at. Could that CAPP be used as some kind of ex gratia payment if it was upfront and not across four to five years and it was increased based on the figures Mr. White outlined in that table? Would that suffice as that kind of ex gratia payment?

Mr. Simon White:

Absolutely, and it is completely possible to do it, but it would not satisfy everything because it does not provide the income. However, that same mechanism that has been found to get around the inhibiting legislation means they can do it. It is down to being able to provide a budget to do it. People want to do the job. If we want to get people back into forestry, we need to do this.

I will expand on one thing Mr. O'Connell said. There are four of us here. We are a tiny representative group. However, not one of us has seen an inspector since we have seen ash dieback affect our farms. Nobody comes near us. Nobody asks or gives us any advice as to what we should do or tells us we must to this or we must join the scheme. We read about the scheme and it is not in our favour. There is no advice. Nobody is coming to help us. Nobody from Teagasc is coming to tell us what we should do on our farms. There is nobody. We are left on our own. This is disgraceful. This is supposed to be the organisation that is looking after forestry in this country. It is why we think we are redundant. They see us and our children and our children's children in private forestry. However, we are the people who own the land. If anyone wants to plant land in this country, we are the people who have the land. We are the only ones who can do it. It seems like the State wants us to give up our land or sell it to corporate bodies. There is something seriously wrong. That is what we are asking for. We need to understand what is happening and why it is happening. It should not be allowed. Our politicians should not allow it to happen. Every time we appeal to the Government, however, nothing happens.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Mr. White.

Johnny Mythen (Wexford, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses very much for coming here. Obviously, many questions have been asked. The witnesses paint a very grim picture of the industry itself. In their opinion, it seems to be that this plan was ill-thought-out, ill-conceived and irrational. Have the witnesses costed the actual loss to themselves to date? What figures are they looking at? It makes no sense.

We know that timber is basically the most efficient building material in the world. It is not just the witnesses' industry. We are here fighting for more housing. What do we build houses with? What do we build roofs with? Timber. As I said, it is a serious issue in the whole country. I am very sorry to hear Mr. Reardon's particular story. It really is heart-rending. I know that does not mean anything to him.

It seems to be that there is no thought behind this. There is no forward thinking whatsoever. The scheme itself seems to fall down on all issues. As a committee, we will definitely be challenging the format of the increase from €668 to €7,400. That is nearly tenfold or elevenfold. How is that justified? That is one of the areas at which we will definitely be looking. The whole scheme seems to be unfair, however.

What is the immediate solution, if there is one? If the witnesses had a magic wand this minute and could say, "We will do something now", what could be done? Forgive my lack of knowledge on this, but the witnesses talked about species of trees and said they were advised 20 years ago. Are there any trees at the moment that are immune to the bark beetle, as such, or immune to a lot of diseases that we can grow fairly quickly in Ireland?

Mr. Simon White:

I thank the Deputy. The first thing I would say is that I get from him, and I do not want to give this impression, that we are anti-trees or anti-planting as such.

Johnny Mythen (Wexford, Sinn Fein)
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Not at all.

Mr. Simon White:

I want to get across that we are the pioneers. We are the people who really got into this and who really understand it. We are the people with the knowledge. We are desperately understanding of the fact that we need to plant trees in this country. We need to look at every innovative way of doing so. We probably have a good idea as to how it should be done. There are lots of different species we should use. They are not being looked at. People need to sit down around a table and work out what needs to be done. This type of consultation process they set up of ticking a box because they talked to us, like Project Woodland, which is a complete and utter waste of time and money, is not good enough. We need to sit down. We need to be involved in designing these schemes because we are the ones who will make it work. That is the first thing I want to say.

The Deputy asked about the costs. We as an organisation are representing private forestry in Limerick and Tipperary. However, we found ourselves representing people with ash dieback all over Ireland because we are the only ones who came in with a voice. Therefore, I do not want to personalise it to us as to what our costs are. However, I could take a representative sample and say that somebody with a 25-year-old plantation who planted 20 acres of ash is looking at the moment of actual loss of €120,000 worth of tress. That is with 20 acres. If somebody had 10 acres, he or she is looking at €60,000 at that time. However, somebody who had a 30-year-old plantation is looking at probably double that as potential. I refer to the trees that would have been there.

You do not harvest them all in one go, as Mr. O'Connell explained. It is a business, and something to hand on.

Apart from the value of the trees, our land is worthless. You could not give it away to anybody because there is an obligation on it. One of the major problems is that we have made it so that once you plant trees, it is compulsory to do so. That is ridiculous and the Department has stuck to it like a fly to flypaper. It does not make sense because it is counterproductive. We know what we are like in Ireland in that if people are compelled to do something, they do not want to do it. Everybody knows that once someone goes into trees, the most efficient thing to do with that land is keep it in trees, but people have to have an out. If people cannot grow trees on their land, as we found when trees were planted on peatland and so on, and they cannot plant it again with anything that is going to give them anything back, they should be allowed to go back to a normal sort of production. It does not happen in any other sector so why should it happen with trees? It is holding people back from planting trees. It is counterproductive and does not make sense, yet the Department is sticking rigidly to it. It is a wrong premise. Anyone can see and understand that it is totally wrong and counterproductive. If the Department were to remove that requirement, it would make a huge difference to people in giving them confidence to get into forestry and grow something because they would have an out. There is no out and that is determining that the land that is planted is worthless because people cannot do anything else with it.

Paul Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for being with us. I am not going to delay. I heard them discussing trying to make the train earlier and there have been a lot of delays with votes. I compliment them on the submission. I do not have many questions because it is all in there. Anything we needed to know is in there.

I have a couple of quick questions for my own information. The witnesses correctly pointed out that €2,000 per hectare is available for removal or clearance when it can cost up to €7,000 to remove a mature crop. I am not arguing the issue. I am just asking for clarification on whether there is some salvage value, the more mature the timber is. Will the witnesses give us some idea what salvage might be in a hectare of mature timber, be that for firewood or whatever? It will certainly not fill the €5,000 gap that has been there.

While my next question is not directly related to the issues on the table for discussion today, will the witnesses comment on the future of ash in Ireland? I was driving home the other night and this topic was discussed on "Off the Ball" on Newstalk, which is a sports programme. Naturally enough, the programme was coming from a hurling perspective and the clash of the ash. Has ash got a future, irrespective of whether we had the most ideal scheme in the world? Is there chance of a comeback?

Mr. Simon White:

I thank the Senator. I will pass him a photograph of what the woods actually look like. Can he see any salvageable timber in that? They have been destroyed. That is just to give him some idea. There is very little salvage value. With many of the trees I had to cut down because they were dangerous, the first 10 ft of the tree has gone to mush. The trees are dying and breaking down in front of us. Regarding the salvage value, the cost of taking out large trees is way beyond anything that would make it worthwhile. You have to get them out of the way in order to clear the ground and it becomes much more difficult. That is the cost of doing so.

The other question was on the future of ash. We worked with the GAA on trying to design schemes to identify trees that might be immune to ash dieback disease. The scheme being proposed involves taking out all the trees. Certain trees may be left in but that is impossible to do if the ground is being cleared. You cannot leave a tree where there is a bulldozer moving around. That would just not work and it is naïve to think it could. There are other ways of doing it in certain areas. Maybe there are some areas where people should be paid a premium to leave their trees where they are, take out the dead trees and allow regeneration to go on. Maybe in doing that, we would be able to identify some trees to propagate and bring on, because ash is incredibly important. After 40 years of elm disease, an immune elm is being developed in Holland of all places. There is a possibility, therefore, but at the moment it is going to have to be filled in by bamboo and things like that, for producing hurleys. We need to get onto that. We need innovative thinking. Teagasc is doing a tiny amount of research into immune trees. The amount of effort it is putting into forestry became obvious when, in the third quarter of last year, Teagasc's latest research booklet, which is full of the research the organisation is doing, did not feature one word on forestry. Teagasc is getting €750,000 from the State for forestry. The mind boggles at what is going on.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Chair for letting me in. I welcome the Limerick and Tipperary growers back to the committee. We had them in several times when I was a member of the committee.

I have a few quick questions. From the 1990s on, farmers were encouraged to plant forestry. It was for profit, and so be it, but they were guaranteed forestry would be on an equal footing with all other sectors and that any diseases were the responsibility of the Minister. At what stage did the witnesses realise the Minister or the Department was pulling back from the guarantees farmers got in the 1990s?

Ms Mary MacCormack:

We were suspicious for a few years and then from about 2016 or 2017 onwards, we may as well have been talking to the wall. It was not just one or two people. There were people in other counties as well. They were all a bit bamboozled by the whole approach. I have noticed in latter years that we have Ministers with an environmental portfolio who go all over the world every few years. They were in Scotland and they were here, there and everywhere. They will talk about the need for cleaner energy, cleaner transport and everything else. I read every blessed thing I can find in the newspapers when those world conferences are on. Not one Minister ever mentions forestry, its merits for carbon storage or its promotion. You could forget about it then. I do not know what has to happen. I suppose it could be the big fines Europe is going to impose. They are going to be in the multiple millions because we are so far away from the targets that are set and to which we signed up.

Then there is the record. It is mind-boggling how a Minister could be excited about a forestry programme. If I had €1.3 billion in the morning, which is the money that has been allocated, I would definitely be looking at the small guy first. It does not all have to go to the multinational investment funds or whatever they are. We would be keeping all that money in the local community. Where possible, it is more cost-effective to give local contractors the job of removing trees, thinnings or whatever. That money would be spent locally as well. I do not know where the money that will go to Gresham House is going to be spent. I have no idea. Maybe it will be wonderful for forestry but I cannot see it. There should not be two sectors. The Government cannot isolate one section, which is the big multinationals, and then abandon the small guy.

They hope we will fade away and stop giving out. They think we have no entitlements. We have an entitlement to earn a living from our land.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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I agree with Ms McCormack. The question was whether this is going to be the answer.

Ms Mary McCormack:

It will not be the answer but it seems to be the policy.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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The smaller grower is being hurt by that too. Ms McCormack referred to a figure of €1.3 billion. Is that the figure that was given for the one-size-fits-all approach?

Ms Mary McCormack:

Yes. That was going to save the whole system.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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Regarding the difference between the €2,000 and the €7,000, the €2,000 was being offered for small saplings and the €7,000 was being offered for-----

Ms Mary McCormack:

The €1.3 billion was a sum. It was not for the likes of us. It was there for-----

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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For the overall sector.

Ms Mary McCormack:

No. It was to buy land. Coillte would get it to buy land and plant it. It probably has its merits but it will definitely put all of us out of business if we are not out already. It is very short-sighted. The recent report on ash dieback and its recommendations was a terrible missed opportunity. It could have engendered confidence and got things off the ground again, but the will is not there for some reason that we cannot understand.

Mr. Simon White:

I need to clarify the figure of €1.3 billion. It was put there for developing the new forestry programme. The fact is that because people are not planting and it has not been done, much of that will go back to the national coffers. It has been ring-fenced and has to be used in the schemes that are there. If they are not taken up, it goes back. That is counterproductive because the schemes have been badly designed. A sum of €79 million has been put into this new scheme, which is way off the mark for what is needed to sort out ash dieback. If ash dieback was sorted out and money was put into doing that, people would take up the €1.3 billion. The Deputy stated that we went into growing our trees for profit. We went in for many other reasons too. We understood the environmental need to grow the trees. We understood that we needed to grow them because 75% of hurleys being made in the country at the time were from imported ash, when we could grow ash ourselves. From that perspective, we were pioneers who understood that we really need to grow trees. Nothing can mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions like trees. People talk about rewetting bogs. Trees will do 13 times more sequestration of carbon than a bog. Trees are the way to go. We know how to do it but we are being hamstrung.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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If I came across as making out that the witnesses were in it for profit, I was just saying that they were encouraged to go into it, and if they made a profit, fair play to anybody who did.

Mr. Simon White:

I accept that.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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It is the same as any sector in the industry.

Mr. Simon White:

I was just trying to expand.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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The stance taken by the Department, which it is rigidly sticking to when it has been told it is unworkable and is ignoring the knock-on effects, is a disgrace. We have said in this committee before that it is a disgrace that the witnesses are being treated like this. How does the Department hope to encourage people like the witnesses to go into the industry now to have timber in 25 or 30 years when it is treating people like this?

Ms Mary McCormack:

It is too late.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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Is Ms McCormack saying it is too late to encourage people now?

Ms Mary McCormack:

It is too late. I do not know what you would have to do to get people to go into forestry.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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We all acknowledge that we have a problem now with the lack of timber and with ash now gone. We will have a serious problem down the road, as Deputy Mythen said, if people are not coming into it regularly.

Ms Mary McCormack:

With the way things have panned out in the last 25 years, why would people risk it? We do not know what is coming. Nobody can tell us what the plan is. We have not even got a contract that states certain things. Instead, it can be changed anytime and any change that is made is not for our benefit.

Mr. Simon White:

When we signed up, we did not understand all the small print because it was all hidden in the legislation and such. It was only when things went wrong that we suddenly found how we were caught. Now that we know how we are caught and the effects of it, we can see that this needs to be changed to make it attractive to young people and the next generations to come in. They are looking at what happened to us and they are angry because it will affect them in the future. All that needs to be done is to change that and also change the things that are wrong in the system and the way we got it wrong. We can then rebuild trust in growing trees because doing so makes sense to everybody. Everybody is telling us it is the right thing to do. We know it is the right thing to do. I am an environmental scientist. I can think of nothing better than to plant trees, but you have to entice people into it. You have to build confidence and get the young involved. All of us here are getting old. There are young people but they are not here because they see what has happened to us and do not want to know about it at the moment. Sort us out and they will come back.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses. Finally, I have a statement to back up what was said earlier. If we are not careful, if the Government Departments do not learn their lessons and the black beetle gets in, as ash dieback disease got in, the whole industry will be in danger of collapsing. Have the witnesses any confidence from talking to the Ministers that they are capable or that they even appear to be listening to the witnesses about trying to keep out the black beetle?

Ms Mary McCormack:

No. That will change the whole landscape of the country because a certain percentage of people have ash but most forestry that was planted in the 1990s has Sitka spruce as its basis. It is a commercial crop for building and so on. When that is wiped out, I do not know what rate it will progress at, but it is like another slap and the other cheek being turned. The IFA pleaded with the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, to ban the importation of Scottish timber until it had a chance to review it. He refused because, he said, he could not ban it in the interests of the movement of goods. This timber is from Scotland, which is not in the EU. I do not know where the Minister's priorities lay. Europe is blamed for many things but Scotland is outside the EU. Europe cannot dictate to us that we have to allow the importation of Scottish timber. The Minister of State, Senator Hackett, said just two weeks ago that pests and disease know no boundaries. She was dead right.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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It does not help when it is imported.

Ms Mary McCormack:

It does not. I am not saying she made the decision herself.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for the presentation.

Tim Lombard (Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for attending. I would like to home in on a few things. The first is that, in the presentation, they referred to rebuilding trust and confidence in the State to aid forestry because they are at a low rate. In other words, we have a significant issue with confidence in the sector. As they stated, it is an issue with trying to increase our targets and where we are going. A quarter of the land is basically sterile now with no real future for coming into forestry. The witnesses also mentioned the age profile of forest owners and how trying to get young people into the sector is such a big issue. We are at a crossroads. How we can move forward and get significant movement to progress this landholding is an issue. The witnesses stated that we need to change grants. That is probably part of the solution. How many acres nationally are tied up by ash dieback?

Mr. Simon White:

About 20,000.

Tim Lombard (Fine Gael)
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The potential for bringing those 20,000 acres back into the system will have a significant impact for society in future. The real question is about changes that are required. What are the witnesses' requests to the Minister? Will they go through the major changes to the scheme that are required so that confidence can be built?

I have a second question about the witnesses' plantations.

I thank the witnesses for showing us the pictures of them. It is a frightening affair. It must be horrible. May I ask about the issue of the potential for fire on these plantations? Down in my part of the world, not ash plantations but gorse was a huge issue this time last year. Hundreds of acres on mountains were burned. The witnesses might elaborate. Are they fearful that these plantations could be a threat to forestry going forward regarding fire? What do they think is the solution to that issue?

Mr. Simon White:

The first question the Senator asked was about confidence. Forgive me, and I desperately do not want to sound impertinent, but we need a strong Minister dedicated to forestry. Mackinnon said it in his report. We need political leadership to change this around. That is the first thing. If we had that, if we had political leadership and determination to do this, it could be done. I have no doubt about that.

When it comes to the Senator's question about-----

Tim Lombard (Fine Gael)
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Fire hazard.

Mr. Simon White:

The reconstitution ash scheme states: "Applicants should ensure that their forest has adequate insurance cover against damage from ... fire, and windblow, etc." We cannot get insurance.

Tim Lombard (Fine Gael)
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I was just going to ask if applicants can get it. They cannot.

Mr. Simon White:

How can we get insurance? We have stupid things in the legislation. Anybody who puts in a forest roadway has to allow the public access to it. Did Members know that? Most people do not. With security on your farm or your land, with your machinery and everything else, do you want to allow the public walk through it? No other sector is asked to do that. If you are given a grant to build a building, such as a cowshed, do you have to allow the local community have meetings in the summer in your hay barn? It does not work that way, but we have to allow the public. If the public come onto our farm roadways to walk through our farms, and if one of them throws a bottle to the side and the sun hits it, there could be a fire. If they come in and light a nice little bonfire, that is all very well and everybody thinks that is lovely and we should provide this lovely benefit to society, but there are huge risk factors and we cannot get insurance. It is not available at any amount that makes it worthwhile, so we face those risks.

We need the State to get serious about growing trees if we are going to do what we say to the EU we are doing and as regards the climate change things to which we have signed up. We are going to fail. We need political leadership. What if we had it? What if we had a strong Minister who understood and could tell her minions in her Department what to do and stop listening to the rubbish coming from them? They basically do not want to do the job. They do not want to look for more money, but more money is needed to do this. It cannot be done without more money.

As we said, we are not going away. It took 40 years for the people affected by the Stardust fire to get it. We are not going to go away but we will be replaced by the younger generation, who will still be coming to this thing unless it is dealt with. Why not deal with it? It just needs leadership. The Taoiseach the other day congratulated the Minister of State on doing this and said how hard she and the Department worked. Since the six months, all they have been able to come up with is a one-thing-fits-all. No work of any merit has gone into designing this scheme. A five-year-old could have done it. The Taoiseach needs to lead. He needs to understand that if we want to deal with forestry, we are going to have to take it seriously. We believe - I do not know if everybody else does - that forestry has a huge future in this country. If we lose it, and at the moment it is looking like by 2035 we will no longer have a forestry industry, we are going to have to import all that timber. Our mills and suchlike do not mind. They are importing the timber at the moment, chiefly from Scotland or wherever else they can get it. They do not mind if they get Irish stuff. They are leaving our stuff in the ground to buy it elsewhere. It has brought the price down. It does not make it worthwhile. We need leadership and we need somebody to take some strong decisions and make sure this happens.

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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I thank you for your comprehensive answers. Sorry for the interruptions with votes but, unfortunately, it has been one of those evenings when legislation has been going through the Dáil Chamber.

We will now suspend to allow the next witnesses to come in. We will discuss this matter at our next private meeting, which we will have next week, and we will put together a response to go to the Minister of State from this evening's meeting.

Mr. Simon White:

Thank you, a Chathaoirligh. I will say before we finish that we as an organisation represent all sections of tree growing and forestry. We have had to devote an enormous amount of time to this because there was a void for anybody working with ash dieback. We do not want to do this but we have to do it. We are under pressure from our members, quite rightly, who say we have to represent them on everything. We do not want to keep coming back to the committee and we desperately want this dealt with. We will keep doing this as best we can but we are limited in what we can do. We are incredibly grateful to you and your committee for continuing to listen to us. It gives us and the next generations hope. We can do it; it can be done.

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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Thank you. The meeting is suspended.