People risk being hurt or killed as the spread of ash tree dieback around the country leads to the collapse of roadside trees, the industry’s representative group has told an Oireachtas committee.
Appealing for a solution to the ongoing problem, the Limerick and Tipperary Woodland Owners (LTWO) group addressed the potential threat posed by rotting plantations.
“These trees are going to die. And if you look down the roadsides all over this country, there’s roadsides owned by these farmers with these trees that are going to die…they’re dangerous,” said chairman Simon White. “As they fall, they can kill people.”
Mr White was appealing to members of the Oireachtas Agriculture Committee for help in pressing the Government to introduce a scheme its members would consider fair and financially viable.
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Ash dieback was first confirmed in Ireland ten years ago at a forestry plantation in Co Leitrim. While familiar to the public for its deleterious effects on the production of hurleys, the disease has swept through numerous plantations causing financial hardships to growers.
The LTWO has appealed, with support from the Committee, for changes to the State’s Reconstitution and Underplanting Scheme (Rus) which aims to manage the disease and which offers €1,000 per hectare for the controlled removal of stock.
Since its introduction in 2020, the LTWO claims only 250 people have applied and about 64 have been processed, out of thousands of growers. It wants improvements in financial supports and help in securing alternative land use.
Independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice said such low applicant numbers represented a “damnable indictment” of the scheme. Sinn Féin committee member Martin Browne said he had met a grower who applied for the Rus scheme in June 2020 and was still waiting for it to be processed.
However, a clearly frustrated Mr White focused on the toll the disease was taking on his members, compounded by a seeming reluctance on the part of Government to remedy the problem along lines they would consider fair.
“I’m sick and tired of the job because I have no answers for [growers]. We’ve lobbied and lobbied and lobbied on their behalf and we have nothing to say to them…it’s soul destroying,” he told the committee on Wednesday night.
The organisation’s vice-chairman John O’Connell said “ash is gone, ash is dead”, that perhaps 5 per cent of trees are resistant but that it would take a long time for the stock to replenish.
With recent Government schemes to compensate homeowners for defective Mica building materials, as well as other agricultural compensations, Mr White said it was difficult to understand why ash growers were unable to secure further support.
“Never in the history of the State would it appear that farmers incurring such significant losses caused by a disease have been given no income support and no compensation for such loss,” he said.
“After ten years and more of inadequate action by the authorities in charge, it’s no wonder that people affected are turning really angry. They are now investigating all legal routes to gain redress for what they have suffered.”
However, the organisation was pleading its case to a sympathetic committee which has vowed its ongoing support.
“I never saw a disease at farm level that was outside the farmer’s control that wasn’t compensated for,” said chairman Jackie Cahill. “You’re in a unique situation.”
