The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has confirmed that Minister of State for Land Use and Biodiversity in DAFM, Pippa Hackett, did not attend the first meeting of the ash dieback taskforce earlier this week.
The taskforce met on Tuesday, May 28, and Minister Hackett said in a statement that there was “constructive engagement of all concerned” at the first meeting.
DAFM confirmed to Agriland that “Minister Hackett did not attend” the first meeting of the taskforce.
The taskforce meeting was chaired by assistant secretary general Paul Savage.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Minister Hackett said: “When bringing the ash dieback action plan to cabinet last month, together with an additional €79.5 million in funding for ash plantation owners, I stated my strong commitment to ensuring that my department acts swiftly to implement all of the recommendations of the independent review that I commissioned into previous handling of the outbreak of ash dieback.
“Stakeholder participation and representation of ash plantation owners will be central to my department’s implementation of the action plan, and today’s first meeting of the ash dieback taskforce is a key step along this road.
“The taskforce will be the forum through which my department will engage in an open and detailed manner with representatives of landowners and of the wider forestry sector as we move forward to implement the action plan,” Minister Hackett concluded in her statement.
Criticism of ash dieback taskforce
Simon White, chair of the Limerick and Tipperary Woodland Owners (LTWO) said efforts to portray the first meeting of the taskforce as a “successful collaboration is totally misleading”.
White said: “It was patently clear to everyone at that meeting that the taskforce faces an impossible task“.
White stated that there is a “lack of sufficient funding within the scheme allocated to each step in a complicated process”.
Derek McCabe, chair of the Irish Forestry Owners (IFO) and member of the ash dieback taskforce who attended the meeting wishes “to refute” Minister Hacketts statement of “constructive engagement”.
McCabe said the taskforce met for the first time this week, “six months after the recommendation in the ash dieback report that such a task force should be set up as a matter of urgency”.
The terms and conditions of the taskforce were issued to both White and McCabe the night before the meeting, they each explained.
“When asked to agree the terms and conditions of the task force…the majority of stakeholders said they could only do so with expressed reservations and under duress,” White explained.
“Bearing in mind that most of these depend on the departmental forestry schemes for a major proportion of their business income it is clear they were in an invidious position if they opposed the terms of reference,” the LTWO chair added.