Fears over sale of Irish forests

Fears over another Government give away of Ireland’s precious natural resources haven’t gone with Fianna Fáil’s departure from public power. With profits from oil, gas and mineral rights having already been bizarrely offloaded by successive governments, it is now the turn of our forest holdings to be offered into the grabbing hands of foreign investment companies. Their counterparts in Britain were forced into an embarrassing u-turn on the very same issue, and now our incoming government are leading us to believe that they will not be so foolish in taking the reins from their perpetually dishonest predecessors.

Coillte’s value is estimated to be in excess of €1.2bn; a figure arrived at largely down to the value of the land rather than the trees and amounts to 7% of land in the State. The sale of Coillte land will provide much needed funds to a coalition inheriting a cash-strapped Department of Finance, but is considered ill advised by many professionals in the environment sector. It is the International Forestry Fund, chaired by former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern who are believed to be the first in line of foreign investors waiting to snap up the valuable Irish territory. The company are based in Switzerland and are principally financed by the Irish Forestry Fund and Helvetica Wealth AG of Switzerland who use their base in Liechtenstein and Switzerland as a marketing ploy to attract investors with the benefits of offshore bank accounts. The China Investment Corporation are also said to have expressed an interest.

UCD economist Colm McCarthy has once already recommended to the Government that Coillte be sold to private companies, along with many other important and valuable state assets. His imminent follow-up report is expected to say the very same to the newly formed coalition.

7% of land in the state is equivalent to twice the size of County Meath, so the prospect of our Government giving over so much to foreign investment companies is perhaps understandably worrying for Irish citizens already embarrassed into offering our sovereignty to Brussels and Berlin. The sale of semi-state bodies did feature prominently during the general election campaign with Labour and Fine Gael both committing to the retention of Irish forests by the State. However, outgoing Energy Minister Pat Carey’s eleventh hour grant of permission to Shell to lay the last of the Corrib gas line leaves you wondering what other surprises Fianna Fáil have left for their successors.

Andrew St Ledger, an Environment Pillar representative for the NGO CELT (Centre for Environmental Learning and Training) and the Woodland League, has been trying to raise awareness on the issue for seven years now. As well as his concerns over the potential sale of Coillte lands, he also has issue with the “nefarious practices” of the semi-state body itself, describing their activities as “the singular most destructive activity on the Irish Environment.” They employ unsustainable practices such as “clearfelling and chemical applications, yet have been protected by vested interests for many years as the Forestry Industry is run by the Pension fund companies,” he said.

St Ledger says there are a number of vested interests at work here, not least of which are the many thousands of people who have invested in the last six forestry funds whole heartedly believing that they were engaging in environmentally sound activity. “It is understandably difficult for them to accept the truth about what their money has been used for,” he said. Using tree farms of chemically dependent trees is a global phenomenon and said to be the primary activity of the International Forestry Fund. Furthermore, what is critical to greedy investment company plans in attaining these woodland assets are mining rights and the emerging, is the emerging, and extremely lucrative, carbon trading market.

When Coillte was set up in the early 90s, it conducted a geological survey of the land underneath the forests. The mineral deposits beneath the trees are understood to be extremely valuable. Coillte are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and as such only a handful of people have ever seen the report; among those people though is the Finance Minister, an office the current chair of the International Forestry Fund held at the time of the survey. In the office of Taoiseach, Mr Ahern would also have been the person charged with appointing most of the directors to the board of Coillte.

The sell-off or Ireland’s resources has been a common trend in Fianna Fáil-led governments and with the former Taoiseach himself. Deals made between Charles Haughey’s government and multinational oil companies means all wealth raised from oil or gas in Ireland leaves it. In 1987 corrupt Minister Ray Burke bizarrely changed the law to reduce the State’s share in offshore oil and gas from 50% to zero and abolished royalties, and then in 1992 Finance Minister Bertie Ahern reduced the tax rate for profits made from the sale of these resources from 50% to 25% while the international average stands at around 68%. And finally, Pat Carey’s signing off of the Corrib gas line on Election Day marked what many considered one last act of treason in giving the go ahead for Shell to build infrastructure that will pump gas from the west coast to their interconnectors in Britain.

The outgoing Government actions on this issue concerned the setting of a Review Group on State Assets, under the stewardship of an Bord Snip Nua author Colm McCarthy, to examine precisely what the value of our state companies are. Coillte is amongst the companies that the group is examining. The group's work is not yet completed, therefore it now ought to be for the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition Government to examine the findings and determine a course of action.

Fine Gael’s position on the matter isn’t entirely clear however. Agriculture spokesperson Andrew Doyle has said they don’t want to sell the forests. “Our vital national resources are not up for sale. National resources like forestry, agriculture and marine resources are held in trust for all the people of Ireland,” he said. Meanwhile his leader, and Taoiseach, Enda Kenny proposes to sell “non-strategic” State Assets and has been unspecific in explaining what exactly what that means.

During their time with the Environment and Energy portfolios in Government, the Green Party regularly stated that it made neither economic nor strategic sense to sell off state assets such as Coillte, and they saw it as critical in the evolution of the ‘Green’ Economy in terms of the biomass energy and environmental sectors and held the belief that state ownership was the best means to realise the ambition. The manner in which they were bullied throughout their term in office however did not see them command significant authority on the matter – particularly in regard to their capitulation in their ambitions to do with the ‘Shell to Sea’ campaign in Mayo.

As the General Election loomed at the end of January, Coillte invited tenders from economists to provide an economic evaluation of the public goods provided by their forest estate of 445,000 ha throughout Ireland. Spokesperson for Coillte, Tom Byrne explains that the purpose of the tender is simply part of the “new understanding behind the management of large areas of lands and ecosystems” in their stewardship. As to the timing of the notice of invitation to tender in the dying days of the Fianna Fáil-led government, with speculation over the privatisation of Irish forests and Pat Carey’s last gasp decision making, he said it was “purely coincidental”.

In response to allegations, the International Forestry Fund, as mentioned chaired by former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern were quick to “unequivocally” say that they held no interest in acquiring any of the assets of Coillte. The company already operates commercial forests in Ireland and Scotland and is currently acquiring forest lands in Central America in which spokesperson Paul Brosnan claimed they are operating in line with international standards despite assertions to the contrary. They are adamant that their forestry assets are “managed in accordance with best forestry practice in a socially responsible manner,” they say they don’t engage in the monoculture or chemical fertilizers practices that they are widely accused of.

They also denied that they would even be interested in Coillte lands if indeed they were to become available which is rather a bizarre stance from a commercial entity whose primary concern is the forestry industry and even more bizarre considering that they did express an interest in buying Coillte in January of last year.

At the time of writing, Fine Gael had yet to say what obligations exactly Fianna Fáil had tied them into aside from the obvious financial targets agreed with those on mainland Europe, but as we are well aware, political promises are regularly found broken in election aftermaths.