Claims that vulture funds are buying up land in Leitrim for forestry led to a passionate debate at this week’s meeting of Leitrim County Council.
Fianna Fail Councillor Justin Warnock says it would make the ‘cash for ash’ scheme in the North of Ireland look like pocket money because ‘cash for ash’ is not displacing people.
He told councillors at a meeting yesterday that he was begging for the plantation of Leitrim be halted . . . and halted now.
Councillor Warnock says vulture funds are ‘buying up Leitrim like there’s no tomorrow’ and it is having a devastating effect on rural communities.
Local farmers were priced out of the market and often did not even know neighbouring land was being sold to forestry companies.
Cllr Warnock called on the council to ask EU Agriculture Commissioner if it was EU policy to financially support this ‘land grab’ by agents of forestry companies, adding that, in time, it would put whole communities throughout Leitrim into oblivion.
However, Fine Gael Councillor John McCartin says writing to the EU Commissioner asking him to compare how farms are treated financially in Ireland is not very wise.
He points out that €1.8 billion of farm funding comes from the EU and it was clear there is as much, if not more, employment in an acre of timber as there is in an acre of farming.
He says 16,500 people work in the timber industry in Ireland.
He also says he would love to see the 50% of farmland in County Leitrim that Cllr Warnock says is planted.
Cllr McCartin says they should deal in facts about what he describes as ‘an emotive issue’:
