Forestry Sector
Dail Éireann — 2022-12-08
============================================================

Michael McNamara (IND), Clare

I appreciate the progress the Department has made but the reality is that while there is an increase and it is an improvement, it is from a very low base which nobody could possibly defend. The question is whether the Department is meeting its targets. The last time I was in this Chamber with Deputy Fitzmaurice the Minister of State accused him of being very negative. People cannot be legitimately accused of being negative for pointing out the obvious.
I very much welcome the new forestry programme and the additional funding. With inflation running at 10%, the failure to index-link it is a problem. For the ten years that inflation was low, it was not a problem but the position is different when inflation is as it has been for the last 12 months. The Minister of State will know better than I do, from sitting at Cabinet, what the predictions are for inflation for the next decade. A sizeable number of economists believe we have entered into a new cycle of interest rates and inflation will remain very high. That will eat into the additional money provided.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2022-12-08/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:24+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-12-08