One of the reasons the issue of a political donation to Deputy Donohoe is so damaging to politics is because it is distracting from issues that would otherwise be dominating the debate and discussion in this House this week.

One of those is the utterly scandalous and unacceptable proposal by Coillte to partner with an UK equity fund to buy up thousands of hectares of land and forestry in this country where public money and a public company in which the Minister of Finance owns 99% of the shares will be subsidising and facilitating a corporate takeover of Irish land and forestry that could reach up to 100,000 ha, as part of Coillte’s plan for afforestation. This is 250,000 acres, which is an area the size of County Carlow, to be potentially handed over to vulture and equity funds. That is completely unacceptable.

I wish to inform the Taoiseach that this Thursday, to coincide with the special debate on Coillte which we requested and the Government has allowed, there will be a protest outside the Dáil organised by the recently-established Save Our Forests – Save Our Lands alliance. This alliance now involves about a dozen different rural organisations, environmental groups, community groups and so on that are completely outraged, as are many of those organisations representing people who work and earn their living from forestry, that the Government and Coillte, the State forestry company that should be responsible for being the guardian of the people’s forest estate and enhancing the afforestation programme are, instead, facilitating profiteering by vulture funds from the UK in this case but potentially by all sorts of vulture funds.

This is so bad because it will exacerbate an already dysfunctional and failed forestry model. Gresham House and other equity funds do not care about biodiversity, farmers, rural communities, climate mitigation, soil or water quality; they care about making money. We will get more of these monocultural Sitka spruce plantations, which actually damage our environment, and adversely affect farmers and our aims to develop a sustainable afforestation programme. Will the Government agree to abandon this and to radically reform the mandate of Coillte in order that it starts to act in the interests of all of the people and stops facilitating the profit hunger of vulture and equity funds?

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue, which I acknowledge is causing a lot of concern at the moment. We should not lose sight of the objective. The objective is to increase dramatically the amount of trees on our island and the amount of our land that is under forestry. We want an increase from about 11% of our land being forestry to something more like 18%, and that means planting millions of trees. We need trees for all sorts of different reasons. We need trees for timber, which includes spruce and conifer trees that are suitable for timber, so that we can build houses to help us with the housing crisis. We need other types of trees too, such as native woodland, for example, for climate action, biodiversity and leisure. It is intended to have a different mix of types of plantations for exactly that reason, namely, that we need trees for lots of different reasons. We need timber for desperately-needed homes, as well as trees for biodiversity and for leisure. All new Coillte forests will be open to the public.

We believe farmers will be the primary drivers of our afforestation programme, as well as being the primary beneficiaries of what is an ambitious forestry programme worth €1.3 billion. Farmers are Ireland's main landowners and will have the opportunity to play the most important and significant role in the creation of new forests. We have designed a new forestry programme to be as attractive to farmers as possible, with farmers receiving 33% more premium payments than other landowners under the new forestry programme, in addition to the single farm payment which other landowners will not receive. In many cases, the income farmers will derive from forestry will be tax-free. It is a very attractive offering and we are encouraging farmers to take up forestry on at least part of their land.

Regarding the Irish Strategic Forestry Fund, which the Deputy mentioned, there has been some misinformation regarding it. First of all, no public land will be privatised. The land that will be bought is already in private ownership. Most of it is already under forest and some bare land will be purchased and afforested. The Government is part of the fund. The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, the Government's sovereign welfare fund, is a minority investor in this fund, alongside the UK fund. Land that is now entirely in private ownership will be brought, at least in part, into public ownership, albeit through a minority shareholding in that fund. The total amount of forestry we are talking about is roughly 1% of all new forest that we intend to develop between now and 2050.

I want to be clear on this. Contracts have been signed. This was not approved by Government but contracts have been signed on it. To be clear, this is not our intended or preferred main model for increasing the number of forests in Ireland. Primarily, we want Irish farmers taking up the forestry programme and schemes that are now available. That will be the mainstay of our forest programme, not arrangements such as this.

Pretty much every farmers' organisation, every organisation that represents communities in rural Ireland and every environmental organisation I can think of are utterly opposed to this deal. They say, rightly, that it is likely to drive up the price of agricultural land, squeezing out farmers and making it more difficult for them to engage in sustainable afforestation.

As I said, it will exacerbate an already utterly failed and dysfunctional model that has been pursued by Coillte, with the consequence that the vast majority of our public forest estates are dead zones of Sitka single species monocultural plantations that do nothing for biodiversity. Some reports have said they are actually carbon emitters because the trees are cut down too young. We need the State forestry company to stop facilitating the profit hunger of even more people by bringing in these funds and to instead support farmers, local communities, environmentalists and so on in developing a sustainable forestry model that will advance afforestation in a way that is good for climate, farmers and communities. This is not it. It is a corporate heist being facilitated with public money and by the State forestry company.

As I mentioned, this arrangement will account for roughly 1.5% of new forests developed between now and 2050.

The mainstay of the forestry programme is going to be Irish farmers and we are encouraging them to plant at least some of their land. The new forestry programme has been designed to incentivise farmers to the greatest extent possible, as I mentioned earlier. Under the new programme, farmers will receive 20 years of premium payments compared with 15 years for non-farmers. They will receive 33% more premium payments and farmers who want to plant new forests will receive the single farm payment on land that they convert to forestry. Private landowners will not receive that payment. As much of the income that farmers derive from forestry will be tax free, it is a very beneficial scheme in that regard.

I reiterate that Coillte will not be selling any existing publicly-owned forests to the fund and nor will it seek to purchase any other publicly-owned land on behalf of the fund. This is land that is already in private ownership that will be bought by a fund which has State involvement in the form of the ISIF.