Coillte is conducting a full review of the farm partnerships it signed over the past 15 years, company executives said at an Oireachtas hearing highlighting dissatisfaction among farmers who entered the contracts to let Coillte manage forestry on their land.

A number of TDs and senators sitting on the Agriculture Committee quizzed Coillte’s chief executive Fergal Leamy and its managing director for forestry Gerard Murphy on the issue.

“Farmers feel that the contracts they signed up to are in some cases being breached or certainly are being stretched to negative impact on those farmers,” said Sinn Féin TD Martin Kenny, highlighting concerns over price and thinning decisions.

In some of these partnerships, the person has to get permission to go up their own land

“You decide when the timber is going to be sold,” added independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice. “The person has no say in it.” He added that under some contracts, Coillte could levy an unspecified “marketing fee” on timber sold, which company executives admitted was unclear.

“In some of these partnerships, the person has to get permission to go up their own land – it’s written into one of them that I’ve read,” Fitzmaurice said.

Fine Gael TD and committee chair Pat Deering said he was aware of farmers owed payments from Coillte for more than two years.

30 different schemes

“There are a number issues up and down the country,” Leamy acknowledged. “We have put in place a dedicated team to deal with the existing farm partnerships.” Murphy explained 30 different partnership schemes had signed up 12,000ha owned by 700 farmers since 2003. “We’re doing a full review of those partnerships, to see in what better way can we identify the lessons and build on that into the future.”

Leamy said that contracts could be “tweaked” on an individual basis when farmers’ circumstances justified it.

Deering and Leamy agreed that Coillte would prepare a detailed response to the committee’s concerns over farm partnerships and appear again early in the New Year.

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