Plans to sell off huge swathes of forestry land should get chop
YOU would imagine that after centuries of fighting for ownership of the country’s land a State agency would be reluctant to sell bits of it off to foreign investors.
Not so, because if a controversial deal being planned by Coillte goes ahead an area equivalent to 1,500 average Irish farms could end up being owned by a British investment fund.
Then again just 10 years ago a Fine Gael government considered selling 7% of the country’s land mass to the Chinese.
There were plans to flog off huge swathes of Irish forests to Chinese logging companies and use the cash generated to pay off debts run up by the rogue banks.
It would have given a foreign company control of vast regions of the country’s landmass for nearly a century.
That was during the horrific austerity years when valuable State assets such as the National Lottery were up for grabs at the insistence of the Troika.
Surely such a treacherous scheme couldn’t happen now that Ireland is being touted as one of the wealthiest countries on Earth. Oh yes it could as the State forestry company Coillte is in the process of doing a deal that could see British investment fund Gresham House buy upwards of 123,000 acres of rural Ireland.
After centuries when British absentee landlords controlled much of the Irish countryside it’s hardly surprising that land ownership is an emotive issue.
Yesterday long-serving Fianna Fail TD Eamon O Cuiv criticised the sale saying the Irish people spent too long getting land back to give it away “willy nilly”.
But it should be remembered the party that considered selling the felling rights of Irish forests to Chinese loggers a decade ago is in power today and their Thatcherite tendencies haven’t gone away. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has defended the deal, although there are many Government TDS, especially in Fianna Fail, adamant that the plan should not go ahead.
Apparently it’s all to do with climate change which is increasingly being used as a cover to make controversial policies and programmes acceptable that would normally be unacceptable.
Once they mention that there are climate targets to be met it’s a signal that they’re doing it whether we like it or not.
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett doesn’t like it, describing it as an “absolute scandal” that must be reversed.
In the Dail he accused the State of “facilitating and financing a corporate grab by a for-profit investment fund of tens of thousands of hectares of land and forestry in this country”.
It is understood that Coillte will manage this land and grow crops of quick-growing coniferous on behalf of the investment fund. What is even more controversial, it’s believed that the investors will own the land and the timber at the end of the deal.
Experts claim that the State’s financial benefit from the deal will be negligible and describe selling off part of the country as a very unorthodox way of meeting the Government’s climate targets.
EU regulations don’t allow the necessary level of state aid to do this but if a private investment is in place State grants can then be drawn down to make up the balance.
If Brussels was really serious about preventing climate change the state aid rules would be altered. Unless, of course, the real aim is for increased privatisation of public assets.
You would also imagine that after the chaos and misery caused by vulture and cuckoo funds in the Irish housing and rental market that the State would be reluctant to enter into controversial deals with private investment funds.
Surely it would be better to change the rules to allow Coillte to plant forests using taxpayer’s cash rather than selling off parts of our country to raise finance.
There should also be programmes to make it financially worthwhile to commercially plant trees on their land as was done at the turn of the millennium.
The question that also needs to be answered is that if Coillte bosses need the help of a foreign investment fund to plant forests in this country, what’s the point in having a State forestry agency at all?
Apart from paying huge salaries to those who make these controversial deals.
It would be better to change rules to let Coillte plant forests