SF motion to stop Coillte’s deal with Gresham House
SINN FÉIN will bring forward a motion next week demanding an end to the Coillte-Gresham House deal which could see up to 12,000 hectares of forests managed by the investment fund.
Concerns have been raised that it could potentially increase the per-acre cost of rural land from €5,000 to €9,000. However, this has been rejected by both Coillte and Gresham House in recent days.
As part of the deal, €200million will be spent by Gresham House to acquire and create new forests, up to 12,000 hectares of which it will manage.
The motion will instruct Coillte to ‘immediately halt their proposed joint venture with Gresham House’, publish the new forestry strategy as a matter of urgency and ‘ensure that the new strategy prioritises afforestation undertaking by local communities, farmers and landowners and public bodies above Investment management ventures’.
It will also call on Coillte to review its 2022 forestry licensing throughput and ‘set in place an ambitious licensing target for 2023 and commit to meeting licensing targets for both Coillte and non-Coillte applicants’.
Speaking yesterday, Sinn Féin’s agriculture spokesman Matt Carthy said that the current forestry strategy does not serve the environment, the economy or local communities.
He said: ‘Government has committed to annual targets of 8,000 hectares of afforestation. But under the current Fianna Fáil Minister and a Green Party Minister of State, afforestation rates are less than a third of those targets and the crisis is getting worse.
‘The proposed Coillte joint venture with Gresham House has caused widespread concern among environmentalists, farmers, the forestry sector and local communities. The venture is not about climate. It’s not even about tree-planting. For Gresham House, this venture is simply about corporate profit.
‘The funds delivered through the venture will be solely for the purpose of purchasing agricultural land that farmers could plant on themselves if the Government delivered a workable regulatory framework.’
Mr Carthy said Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue and Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe own Coillte on behalf of the Irish people and they should instruct the company to ‘immediately stall this plan’.
He said if the deal did go ahead it would ‘undermine’ any chance of meeting afforestation targets and it would ‘antagonise’ the very farmers who were needed to help meet the State’s ambitious targets.
However, the Gresham House deal is set to proceed, with ministers saying that the Irish Strategic Forestry Fund, which is run by the investment firm, was ‘one of a number of models’ that Coillte would be using to contribute to meeting its targets on afforestation.
‘This venture is simply about corporate profit’