Existing legislation and corridors governing forestry “have failed, which is simply not good enough,” the Minister of State for Forestry, Horticulture and Farm Safety, Michael Healy-Rae told the Dáil today (Wednesday, February 26). Minister Healy-Rae also disclosed that last week together with the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Marine, Martin Heydon and the Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications, Darragh O’Brien, he met with “senior people from the ESB” to discuss the corridors that are in place and what needs to be created in the future. Minister Healy-Rae said: “It will involve, we imagine, changing legislation. Everybody believes the ESB has far-reaching legislative powers to go into land and do what is required to protect the power lines but it does not.
New legislation potentially needs to be brought in. It would, of course, go through the Houses of the Oireachtas swiftly as everybody would support it because it would be for the betterment of the people of the country.” He also outlined that existing corridors within forests may have to be enhanced which he said “will obviously lead to a situation where forest owners or landowners may have to be compensated for the encroachment on their land”. The Minister of State for Forestry, Horticulture and Farm Safety faced questions in the Dáil today from the Fine Gael TD for Clare, Joe Cooney, on the vulnerability of power and communications infrastructure across rural Ireland. ESB crews repairing power lines Source: ESB Networks Deputy Cooney highlighted the impact of Storm Éowyn on rural communities and praised the response of ESB workers to the people most impacted. But he also was keen to outline what he described as discrepancies “between the height of the trees and the space between them and the power lines”.
“One person in the west Clare area told me that of 40 reported line breaks that were responded to, 35 were tree-related in forestry where the setback distances were either totally inadequate or not managed,” the deputy told the Dáil. Minister Healy-Rae In response Minister Healy-Rae acknowledged that there was work to be done on this issue but also warned that “you cannot go on to a person’s land where there is, for example, a corridor created already and a wayleave may have been agreed with the forest owner 20 years ago”. “The landowner might have been compensated for that at a certain width. If we are to come along now to that landowner and say that it must be a greater width, we must have legislative powers.
“We cannot go to a person with our hands hanging. We have to be able to say we want to create a bigger wayleave. “We cannot go into a person’s land willy-nilly and say we will do this because landowners have to be respected,” the minister added.”
