Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— June – July 2013
T
HE Left in Ireland, marshalling the ata-
vistic Irish interest in land, has mounted
a formidable ‘Keep Coillte’ campaign to
prevent the IMF-mandated sale of the
harvesting rights of the ‘The Irish Forestry Board
Limited’ who own most of our , hec-
tares of forested land. Nice picnics in Parnell’s
ancestral estate in Avondale led by the extended
Boyd-Barrett family have animated many thou-
sands of the high-minded against the sale of our
sacred woodlands to a rapacious private sector,
perhaps led by the perfidious Bertie Ahern.
There may indeed be social grounds to main-
tain Coillte’s , hectares (% of the
State) and their harvesting rights for the peo-
ple of Ireland. But rummage a little deeper and
maintaining Coillte (whose boss’s salary was
€, until a recent % reduction) itself
has calamitous environmental consequences for
this under-forested, allegedly-green land.
Not so long ago, distinguished visitors to the
Glaskeelan River catchment beside Glenveigh
National Park in Donegal were inspecting part
of a €m EU ‘Interreg’ project designed to ensure
the preservation of the fresh water pearl mus-
sel. In , the Glaskeelan population was
declared one of the eight populations that were
considered to have the most potential to prevent
national extinction – and so recommended for
the highest international priority for conserva-
tion measures.
After Coillte’s guided tour, a few of the scien-
tists decided to take a different route back. What
they found was that a Coillte forestry-thinning
operation had brought functional extinction to
the mussels.
Coillte had used the protected river as a road-
way for its heavy machinery. In the words of
Coillte’s own report: “high levels of silt and mud
were generated, rutted tracks created conduits
for run-off to water courses exporting high lev-
els of sediment”. A subsequent assessment by the
country’s top specialist concluded that the colony
was no longer viable, the last juveniles’ habitat
smothered by the operation.
In fact, the shocking photographs are no
different from those displayed in reports by
environmental NGOs on Coillte’s operations in
countless remote sites. While Coillte is now cel-
ebrating ten years of Forest Stewardship Council
certification, the fresh water pearl mussel is not
the only species being forced into extinction by
its activities. The hen harrier, protected under
EU law, also faces extinction, with pairs left
in .
Coillte, established in , engineered a
grant deal with Ireland’s Ray MacSharry, then
EU Agricultural Commission. From , Coillte
received the EU farmer’s rate grant for planting
land, using the years’ guaranteed income to
leverage bank loans to dispossess more farm-
ers – exactly the opposite of the EU’s original
intention.
MacSharry, who had resigned as Tánaiste and
Minister for Finance when it came out he had bor-
rowed police tape recorders to secretly record
conversations with a cabinet colleague, returned
to Ireland in to chair Coillte, the stream
of funding he had established now pouring into
his own lap. Complaints to the Irish Minister
and European Commissioner by an Irish NGO
fell on deaf ears, but the EU’s Agricultural Audit
Committee took a different view, leading to a rul-
ing that Coillte had no ‘legitimate expectation’
that it would qualify as a farmer, and clawing
back €m in grants.
The Government paid, refusing to admit that
this was state aid – which would have required
permission from the EU.
Worse yet, Coillte’s barbaric forestry practices
led to the ending of the % EU funding for Irish
forestry for the - CAP – at a cost to the
taxpayer of €m a year, a total cost of €m.
Asked recently in the Dáil if Ireland would alter
its policy in to qualify for EU funding in the
next plan, the Minister declined to answer.
Consequently, Coillte reviewed its expan-
sionist planting programme and has planted
only ,ha of new forests since losing the
grants. The ending of Coillte’s illegitimate grants
is now given as one reason for a failure to meet
the national targets in forestry set at ,ha a
year but in fact coming in at -, per year.
The MacSharry era targets were based on
national policy to continue planting at ,ha
a year until to reach ‘critical mass’ – pro-
duction that would enable downstream industries
tony lowes
environment
Get rid
of Coillte
The State forestry
company’s continuing
ownership of 7% of
Ireland serves socialism
better than the
environment
Save Ireland from ... Coillte © Mary Russell
Coillte’s barbaric forestry
practices led to the ending
of the 75% EU funding for
Irish forestry for the 2007-
2013 CAP – at a total cost of
€375m to the taxpayer
“
like paper mills to be created. Not only has this
policy been proved a pipe dream, but by placing
the entire emphasis on plantations of poor qual-
ity non-native timber destined for clearfell the
opportunity to restore Ireland’s legendary for-
ests was lost.
The forest area in the country has increased
from ,ha in to almost ,ha
in . But the broadleaf target of % set in
was largely ‘sacrificial’ bands of broad-
leaves planted as facades around the conifer
plantations and landscaping along motorways.
The days when a squirrel could cross from
Wexford to Kerry in an unbroken canopy of
native trees will not be seen again.
Instead of developing a sensible forestry
policy based on native timbers, Coillte’s nurser-
ies are stocked with the fertiliser-hungry sitka
spruce. The policy of favouring conifers rather
than broadleaves has been disastrous to Ireland’s
environment but has buttressed Coillte’s legal-
ly-mandated ‘commercial basis’, central to its
privatisation.
Playing on the necessarily longer-term matu-
rity of broadleaves rather than conifers, Coillte’s
economic consultant Henry Phillips in
introduced the concept of ‘negative discounted
revenue’ to undermine broadleaves. The term
is not recognised by other economists and was
based on his view that the income from the land
lost while growing broadleaves would be greater
than the final profit. He valued hardwood fire-
wood at € a ton. The price now is over € a
ton, and there is insufficient supply to meet the
demand. Conifers sold for less in than they
did in .
As Coillte sees it, more broadleaves
divert scarce resources and don’t play to our
competitive advantages. An agonising aside to
the tunnel-vision is that Irish ash seeds had to
go to a nursery in Holland before being reim-
ported as saplings – with added ash-dieback
disease which now threatens the trees survival
across Ireland. The costs are not just ecological.
The , infected trees are now subject to an
government emergency grant with a €, per
hectare Sanitation Action Plan payment and up
to €, per hectare for re-establishment and
maintenance.
Although the government announced a pol-
icy review of Coillte in its Programme for
Government, the Department of Agriculture
recently told Village that ‘the deliberations were
superseded by the government decision in
in relation to the sale of state assets’. The legisla-
tion establishing Coillte was excluded from the
current revisions of the Forestry Act now before
the Dáil.
Recently closing its only hardwood mill in
Dundrum, County Tipperary, Coillte feeds its
poor-quality timber into its panel mills, where
since its purchase of the US Louisiana Pacific
in , it holds a monopoly. Since ,
€.bn worth of timber-panel products have
been shipped from Ireland from Coillte’s plants.
As the chairman wrote in the annual report:
“Forests, sawmills and panel mills are interde-
pendent and the integration of our forestry and
panel products’ businesses is a key competitive
advantage and source of value for the Group”.
Ultimately, a decision not to sell Irish forestry
rights may have more to do with the future via-
bility of a semi-state company when an asset as
significant as harvesting rights is removed than
the songs of Christy Moore and the articulate
champions of socialism. But in an ironic example
of the ‘be-careful-what-you-wish-for’ warning,
the Boyd Barretts and Christy Moores are now in
effect bolstering the primary agent of the contin-
uing calamity that has overtaken Ireland’s once
noble forests.
The policy of favouring
conifers rather than
broadleaves has been
disastrous to Ireland’s
environment but has
buttressed Coillte’s legally-
mandated ‘commercial
basis’, central to its
privatisation
“
