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Public agencies and private investors in the Foraois Partnership have declined to provide details on more than one year of operation of the 18,000ha forestry investment project backed by more than €83m in taxpayers’ money.
In response to a freedom of information request from the Irish Farmers Journal, the Government’s Ireland Strategic Investment Fund refused to disclose any of the “legal agreements and correspondence” it holds on its €55m contribution to the partnership.
The European Investment Bank (EIB), which put €28.5m into Foraois, shared redacted copies of the December 2016 agreement establishing the partnership and its latest progress report dated 6 August 2018 in reply to an Irish Farmers Journal request under EU rules on access to environmental information.
The EIB withheld information on the “type, size, price and location of assets acquired and/or identified to be acquired”, arguing this was needed “to protect commercial interests of the partnership, and no public interest has been found to exist in the disclosure of this information”.
The agreement states that the partnership may invest “in semi-mature forestry and new afforestation and in managing private forestry assets located in Ireland”.
It must provide the EIB with a forest management plan within six months of any acquisition, but the bank said it had not yet received any.
Yet the progress report drawn up by Dasos Capital, the Finnish investment firm operating Foraois, indicated that “the partnership made good progress during the second quarter of 2018 and followed the anticipated investment schedule”. This includes “planning for the roading works” for future timber harvesting, indicating active management of some forests.
“We are happy with how things are proceeding and with the co-operation we have with local forest management service providers,” Olli Haltia, a senior partner at Dasos Capital and director of the Foraois Partnership, told the Irish Farmers Journal.
“Deals vary greatly with respect to location, distance to main roads and manufacturing facilities, soils, yield class, age, etc, and it is not our policy to comment aggregate figures to avoid misunderstandings,” he added.
Other industry sources contacted by the Irish Farmers Journal have witnessed limited activity by Foraois so far.
In a recent letter to Sinn Féin MEP Matt Carthy seen by the Irish Farmers Journal, EIB vice-president Andrew McDowell said that Foraois would provide details of its forestry activities after the end of its investment period in 2021.
“It is currently in the process of identifying existing plantations for improved management, and locations for the establishment of new sustainable plantations.
‘‘To date, its focus has been mainly on northwest and southwest of the country,” McDowell wrote. He confirmed that Foraois “can and does purchase land as part of this project,” though not with EIB funding.
Transparency
MEP Carthy said he would continue to seek details from the EIB on Foraois. “It’s the exact opposite to the transparency and accountability of public expenditure that we were told would form part of the new era,” he told the Irish Farmers Journal.
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