TONY LOWES,
Madam, - Your editorial "Rethink Required" (November 22nd) condemning the cuts in forestry funding does not address the core issue of the failure of the 1996 "Strategic Plan for the Development of the Forestry Sector in Ireland."
The plan was predicated on reaching "critical mass" by 2030 to "make true competition and the operation of market forces possible and to support a range of processing industries". The targets have been dramatically missed. In the first five years only 65,000 hectares were planted as opposed to the planned 125,000 hectares.
The purpose of the European funding has simultaneously been subverted. It was the intention of the funding to take land out of agricultural production and support rural communities through value-added industries on the European model. Unfortunately, the vast predominance of Irish planting has been conifers on marginal land, some of our most valuable habitats and hardly a source of agriculture production.
Both the Report to the then Minister for Marine and Natural Resources on Options for the Corporate Development of Coillte Teo. and the Timber Industry Development Group report to the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment highlight the increasingly desperate situation that the forestry sector faces through the production of a low-grade product in an increasingly competitive international commodities market. Much of what farmers have grown, particularly in remote rural areas, is now not even worth thinning.
The rethink that is required is a review of the 1996 Strategy - a course recommended by the Finnish consultants who prepared the original Strategic Plan but consistently refused in the Dáil by the current Minister. Until this takes place, the industry will continue to flounder with the inevitable loss of jobs and closures of unprofitable mills.
The current cuts will only serve to make this clearer. - Yours, etc.,
TONY LOWES, Friends of the Irish Environment, Allihies, Co. Cork.