Danny Healy-Rae challenges tree-planting scheme and roadside safety

And first of all, I too want to welcome Minister Healey Ray here to the Raptors' Committee. And I suppose it's a fierce honour for us as a family to be here. And I suppose we could add ourselves to it, Chairman, because you're rolling over the ditch. We're in a place called Cooley and we're bouncing. So we're getting fairly well surrounded here this evening. And there was a lot of journalists, you know, making hay at the time that the fight was about speaking time. And they said how ridiculous it would be if I was to be asking questions of Minister Michael Healey Ray. So here we are and they can go and lump it now. We're here and I'll ask him whatever few questions I have. And whatever few I'll forget, I'll ask him some other day. Because we do meet. But as part minister, you mentioned the agro scheme for plant trees in land and that you could graze under it. Would you ever tell me, please, how close together the trees will be? Because my knowledge of trees is much don't grow in the room because as trees and big oak trees or whatever, there's big roots coming out of them. And the grass hardly grows, grow at all where they like somewhere. So how close would they be? OK, it's 400 trees per hectare. That's what you would be obliged to plant. And of course, when they would develop and when they grow, you're entitled to thin them further. And you're entitled to, it's a good scheme if it suits an individual farmer because of the fact that they can continue to graze them. I visited places where it has been done and been done in the past before there was actually a proper scheme in place for it. And I was very impressed with what I saw. But it's like everything in life. It would suit some farmers and it wouldn't suit others. But if we have people who might have enough ground for cutting, you know, and that they have green ground that they might say that they wanted a cover of trees on but still graze it. So it's suitable in some cases. I'm dubious enough about it because I do know that they impede the growth of grass, even a far way out from the ditch. And for whatever reason, cattle don't like that type of grass that grows under the trees. But they have a dislike for it. So then the other very important thing, Minister, is, and we all encountered it during the start, is roadside trees. And it's happening more so there's people being killed and everything. What role have you to play in ensuring that this is stopped happening? I mean, in all fairness, like, there was a young man killed in Donegal that time and they killed everywhere with trees falling down. You know them, I know them. And the deputy here made a serious comment there. It is a big onerous problem for a landowner to go to a tree on the roadside with the traffic and the speed and everything. I mean, is the state going to get involved here because it's a serious matter? And we see, and like, and you know what's giving me great concern at the minute? You come up through from Mallor to Kildarby and they did a fine job on the road. We were all agitating for it. And what are they doing, auditing, or they're planting oak and ash trees on the side of the road? I mean, I mean, it is one thing to call them, but to be planting for the future is, is, is, is, does that make sense? Okay. Well, first of all, there's no ash trees being planted anywhere in Europe at the moment. So whatever type of trees there, they're not ash. There might be plenty oak or something else. But you're 100% right in what you're saying. No trees should, at this time, learning the lessons that we've learned, should be planted on roadsides. But you asked another question. Have I a responsibility for trees growing on our roadsides? No, I don't. My responsibility is plantations. And we call it all of the different schemes for reforestation, but not roadside hedges. That comes under, as you know, the Department of Local Government. And that is not my department. And I'm not saying that, trying to get out of it, but I can't accept responsibility for something that I'm not responsible for. All right, well, as far as I'm disappointed with that, because I understood from the start that maybe they do well. And in relation to the trees under wires and the ESB, have you any say in what the ESB are doing or how far back they're cutting, we'll say, inside forestry, blanket forestry, or anywhere? Well, how far back the ESB are supposed to cut the wires to prevent poor outages like we've had for days and weeks and weeks and places like Cordell and Brasna. And it's happening all too often, different places around. Yes. There's a thing I know called the Winter Resilience Programme, which is gearing up for making sure that we won't finish up with situations like what the people of Brasna had to endure, which was horrible and beyond belief, where they were trapped in their homes with no power, no heat, no anything. So this Winter Resilience Programme, they will come with outcomes of what passage should be there. That will be my responsibility then. But as you would be acutely aware, as everybody else is, we want to ensure that, yes, the power lines will be protected. But, yes, people who own the land and who own trees that are growing there, that they will be compensated adequately for their present and future loss because of the fact that you'll be void in the corridor. Because it comes back to what Deputy Art said earlier on about when you sign up for something, can you get in or out of it? Well, if you just think about it, a person planted their forestry, they were told the corridor was going to be that wide, and if we're now going to tell them the corridor will have to be that wide, that'll be good for protecting the wires. But we were devaluing the farmers' land, so we have to compensate them. And the one thing that I want to assure you of, that will be my responsibility, and I'll take that responsibility very seriously. So, right, there was a rule there that if we were planting ground, you would have to plant 80% green ground vis-à-vis 20% waste ground or cutaway bog or whatever. Is that rule changed now when we're talking about the PT side? Is that what you're doing, bringing back that ground? Yeah, there has been changes made with regard to the land types that can be used. As you well know from your experience, from our own working experience, much of the land that could be planted before can't be planted now because of different regulations and different guidelines. But what you can do at all times is you can plant up to land that is 30% or 30 centimetres of peat on top of it. But this thing of encouraging people to stay away from certain type of soils and go on to what you call, because I know this is what you mean, the good green ground, the 2.7 million euros which I'm spending on this intensive program, which is called PEATFAR, which is studying what type of land types we can plant. I'm trying to get us away from this thing that you can't go near that ground because that's PT type soils. And that's a big worry and concern to you and I'm taking that on board and that's why we're spending 2.7 million euros and studying it, because I want to beat the scientists with science. So, look, I agree with you on that. I mean, you mentioned something that some crowd said that we had some romantic notion about planting trees and blanket bog. Well, I went through bogs with tractors and things and machines and there was nothing romantic. I could think of more romantic places to be because in one minute you could be swallowed and it would be trying to get up from underneath and to get out of the machine before it would be covered up. So, like, there is a big difference and those people really don't know what they're talking about and while they have a case for not planting that type of bog, the PT soils that we know it as black ground, we know it as black ground and there's a big difference. So, they need to be educated in that regard. There is a big difference and that ground could be planted. And I have the same concerns as the deputy about planting green ground, good ground, arable ground and I have the same concerns about putting solar panels on it and there must be some regulation because food security, at the end of the day, what agriculture is about, for me anyway and for a lot of you, is food security and we can't compromise that, it shouldn't be compromised, getting rid of 600 to 1100 cows in places just to put in solar panels. I think that's criminal, to be honest. And I heard what Deputy Minister Healy Ray said about that is a landowner's right, but where that stems from, I believe they wouldn't have ever lived, farming or deering or whatever they were at, if they were being paid properly for their projects. We need to move on to the next speaker.