Independent TD Carol Nolan has said 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.
Deputy Nolan who recently visited Laois Sawmills in her own constituency, went on to say that her engagement with sectoral representative bodies such as Forest Industries Ireland (FII) and the Social, Economic and Environmental Forestry Association (SEEFA) has served to confirm her view that a ‘clueless and out-of-touch mentality has taken hold within the Department at ministerial level that is crippling a world class indigenous industry.”:
“The fact is that the forestry organisations now feel they may as well be banging their heads against the wall for all the good it does in terms of making both ministers understand the scale of the crisis,” the Laois Offaly TD said.
“I simply cannot overstate the level of concern that is out there-and it is growing with each passing week and each passing month.”
“On a weekly basis solutions are presented from within the sector. On a weekly basis clear pathways are provided to both ministers and the department. Yet each week there is no return. The situation remains stagnant.”
“The felling and licencing crisis, 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.”
“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 concluded.