It's hard to see the wood from the trees at times...

gone said:
# Pippa Hackett take a bow, you have destroyed the forestry industry.
www.independent.ie

Tree planting last year was ‘at lowest level since 1946’

Just 2,000ha of new trees were planted in Ireland last year — the lowest level since 1946, the Joint Oireachtas Agriculture Committee has heard.
www.independent.ie www.independent.ie
Click to expand...
The Dept have a survey on forestry policy out now and are looking for opinions of people in the industry. Tbh, it seems more concerned on priming people with forestry to allow the public access to forestry but you can make your own minds up about that if you want to go through the whole survey.
https://twitter.com/x/status/1516144536841506824
 
gone said:
# Pippa Hackett take a bow, you have destroyed the forestry industry.
www.independent.ie

Tree planting last year was ‘at lowest level since 1946’

Just 2,000ha of new trees were planted in Ireland last year — the lowest level since 1946, the Joint Oireachtas Agriculture Committee has heard.
www.independent.ie www.independent.ie
Click to expand...

Pippa will be very meek after the next election.

Only yesterday she came out very strongly backing the turf ban and the last time I checked her constituency is one of those most impacted by it.
 
nashmach said:
If her first preference vote went down big time, that would be a sure sign of peoples discontent with the Green party's views in rural Ireland
Click to expand...
I am only being facetious. I know what you mean, but don't wish to give her the credit of even getting a few votes last time.
 
Rusty Spade said:
The Dept have a survey on forestry policy out now and are looking for opinions of people in the industry. Tbh, it seems more concerned on priming people with forestry to allow the public access to forestry but you can make your own minds up about that if you want to go through the whole survey.
https://twitter.com/x/status/1516144536841506824
Click to expand...
just have to look at some woodland in riverstick. theres 40 hectares worth there. coillte sold 22 acres of it which btw has no trails or anything. locals complained about it saying if the sale went ahead (which it did), there'd be a loss of local recreational activities. fair enough i get that. even though the 22 acres has no trails, if some lads went in with machines to chop said 22 acres, they'd probably have to close the existing trails. another point some have made which makes no sense is, "how dare the buyer chop the trees down for profit." last time i checked, no one knows who bought it (the odd few rumours but thats about it) so how would anyone know they want to chop the trees for profit and i could be wrong on this, i thought coillte was there to grow and chop trees for profit
 
Last edited:
Painful as it may be to say this, Pippa has not created this problem.

She's done nothing to improve it in her 2ish years in the job, but the decline started long before she got there.

Have been dealing with the forestry section of the department for years and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
 
JohnBoy said:
Painful as it may be to say this, Pippa has not created this problem.

She's done nothing to improve it in her 2ish years in the job, but the decline started long before she got there.

Have been dealing with the forestry section of the department for years and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
Click to expand...
I agree. This has been a long time in the making and the dept are not capable. There are some good people there but there is also a lot of dead weight in terms of policy and some people. Instead of brushing it all under the carpet, I would rather see some honesty and transparency about the issues but I'm not naive about politicians.

I have a big interest in agroforestry but finding the current scheme is not flexible enough. I'd rather have the option to plant whatever fits into my context and the spacing that is optimal for the slope of land but that doesn't fit into the box that the forestry service has.
 
JohnBoy said:
Painful as it may be to say this, Pippa has not created this problem.

She's done nothing to improve it in her 2ish years in the job, but the decline started long before she got there.

Have been dealing with the forestry section of the department for years and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
Click to expand...
While I get what you are saying, my father, myself and my brother have been dealing with them since 1985/6, the hassle in the forestry is totally caused by Pippa Hackett, the Green party and An Taisce. they have been destroying the forestry industry long before they entered government this time.
 
candor said:
I agree. This has been a long time in the making and the dept are not capable. There are some good people there but there is also a lot of dead weight in terms of policy and some people. Instead of brushing it all under the carpet, I would rather see some honesty and transparency about the issues but I'm not naive about politicians.

I have a big interest in agroforestry but finding the current scheme is not flexible enough. I'd rather have the option to plant whatever fits into my context and the spacing that is optimal for the slope of land but that doesn't fit into the box that the forestry service has.
Click to expand...
The people I feel most sorry for in this debacle are those trying to do their best in the agro-forestry and the native woodland scheme.
 
gone said:
While I get what you are saying, my father, myself and my brother have been dealing with them since 1985/6, the hassle in the forestry is totally caused by Pippa Hackett, the Green party and An Taisce. they have been destroying the forestry industry long before they entered government this time.
Click to expand...
In general as opposed to just mineisterial incompetence

I get ya.
 
candor said:
I have a big interest in agroforestry but finding the current scheme is not flexible enough. I'd rather have the option to plant whatever fits into my context and the spacing that is optimal for the slope of land but that doesn't fit into the box that the forestry service has.
Click to expand...

Theoretically you could get approval for something different, but lord knows what the process is. We still haven't ours planted because the written confirmation we had to go ahead and change some of our failed ash to agroforestry was "not a formal approval". I'm not sure how we'll know that our formal approval is actually valid either, whenever it actually turns up.

If you have a good plan that's a bit out of the very simple/strict formula it might be worth seeking out Eugene Curran down in West Cork to see if it could be approved.
 
JohnBoy said:
In general as opposed to just mineisterial incompetence

I get ya.
Click to expand...
They have been grinding the system to a halt by objecting to everything and it is causing all the licenses to back up. If you are a big operation like Coillte you can afford to wait and fight the vexatious objections.
The small land owners with a small bit of forestry are the ones that they are really screwing and those that are trying to do the best they can for the environment by planting and sustainably managing their land under the native woodland scheme and the agro-forestry scheme are being slowly ground down.
I know a few people with trees in the native woodland scheme and, you have to apply for a license every 5 years, and they are both 2 licenses behind at this point. They are now trying to figure out if they should give up on the scheme and repay the grants or stay trying to wade through treacle.
Like most things they have made perfect the enemy of good and left it that only Cowboys and Bigboys can survive.
 
gone said:
While I get what you are saying, my father, myself and my brother have been dealing with them since 1985/6, the hassle in the forestry is totally caused by Pippa Hackett, the Green party and An Taisce. they have been destroying the forestry industry long before they entered government this time.
Click to expand...

You own TD wouldn't help either with proclamations like this

kclr96fm.com

"Let us do our job" is the call from An Taisce to the Taoiseach following comments on Glanbia's proposed South Kilkenny facility

It's in reaction to comments by Micheál Martin yesterday in the Dáil regarding the plans for Belview
kclr96fm.com kclr96fm.com
 
How do these groups think we are going to meet climate change targets if they grind forestry to a halt???
 
nashmach said:
How do these groups think we are going to meet climate change targets if they grind forestry to a halt???
Click to expand...

candor said:
They don't really care. So long as the gravy train keeps rolling for them, what does it matter?
Click to expand...
I can't speak for any of your counties but forestry in this county is a shambles. The effort to object to planting and harvesting licenses was an idea that originated in this county and it was a complete last resort. Forestry has turned this county into a investor haven and it has been detrimental to farmers. Swards of cheap land was bought up and planted with sika spruce just to hoover up the grants. No consideration was given to access to harvest the trees, drains were allowed to be blocked and backup water onto farmland. There's hundreds of acres of forestry in this town land and about 5 years ago, it was windblown because the soils are shallow and roots are therefore shallow. It was left on the ground for a few years. Last year it was all chipped and the whole lot replanted with more sika. There's 7 different farms of land planted in this town land and one is owned by a farmer. The rest are investment companies.

Im not going to go deep into it but local people here feel aggrieved at the level of forestry in the local area. It brings no benefit to the area. It makes land expensive and farmers can't get land loans approved by banks unless they are buying the land to plant it. Concerns have been raised with the powers that be and forestry acres continued to increase and increase. Many good honest people with no political affiliation got together to try to address the issue and they found that the only option open to them was to object through the proper channels and hold the whole system up so that the spotlight can be shone on the issues with forestry in this county.

I don't know if any lessons are being learned. Just last week there was approval given for forestry on 19 acres of cut away bog not far from here. This goes against every environmental rule in the whole world.

There's an awful lot to still be sorted before people will stop with the blanket objections.
 
Shouldn't the focus of objections then be on large companies, Coillte and investors rather than Paddy or Mary who actually lives in the community?
 
I understood it was some non farming dude from wicklow that was holding things up by objecting to the granting of felling license all around the country on a point of principle
 
Seedsower said:
I understood it was some non farming dude from wicklow that was holding things up by objecting to the granting of felling license all around the country on a point of principle
Click to expand...
One from Wicklow and one from Mayo, is my understanding. Between the 2 of them they account for the vast majority of objections.
 
gone said:
One from Wicklow and one from Mayo, is my understanding. Between the 2 of them they account for the vast majority of objections.
Click to expand...
This Wicklow man has caused a lot of issues. https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/spotlight/arid-40212290.html ..aside of that a lot of the problems come from within the department, they have shifted the goalpost so many times and the ash dieback has added further complications because they decided it had to be treated a specific way in the beginning but later realized it wasn't working, simply put anyone with dieback in a plantation should have been allowed clearfell it straight away and get the hurley butt value out of it before it became fully diseased,
 
Arthur said:
This Wicklow man has caused a lot of issues. https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/spotlight/arid-40212290.html ..aside of that a lot of the problems come from within the department, they have shifted the goalpost so many times and the ash dieback has added further complications because they decided it had to be treated a specific way in the beginning but later realized it wasn't working, simply put anyone with dieback in a plantation should have been allowed clearfell it straight away and get the hurley butt value out of it before it became fully diseased,
Click to expand...
The first dieback was found in this county. They cut out all the infected trees telling everyone that they had isolated the disease but they stacked them at the entrance to the plantation for 5 years and the disease spread from the cut down trees.
 
nashmach said:
Shouldn't the focus of objections then be on large companies, Coillte and investors rather than Paddy or Mary who actually lives in the community?
Click to expand...
Paddy and Mary are the ones applying for the permissions to plant forest on the land that they inherited and then with the licence they are able to sell it to the investors for higher prices than ordinary agricultural land.
 
muckymanor said:
The first dieback was found in this county. They cut out all the infected trees telling everyone that they had isolated the disease but they stacked them at the entrance to the plantation for 5 years and the disease spread from the cut down trees.
Click to expand...

Its rife now anyway, really noticeable around here the last few weeks with the spurt in growth.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top