AFFORESTATION is in danger of wiping out small farmers on good agricultural land, a Fianna Fail TD, Mr Martin Cullen, warned the Joint Committee on State Sponsored Bodies yesterday.

During a hearing with the group of Coillte Teo unions, Mr Cullen (Waterford) said he was "disappointed" to see this situation occurring in areas like the Comeraghs. The success of Coillte Teo, the state forestry company, had also been achieved one foot of substantial redundancies, with up to 40 per cent of the original workforce gone.

Coillte was "shooting itself frequently in the collective corporate foot" as it had no great image with its own workforce, Senator Dick Roche (FF, Wicklow) told the committee.

Expressing surprise at the "uncritical view" of the company presented by the unions to the hearing yesterday, Senator Roche said there was low morale within the workforce, and the company did not even have a good reputation with the contractors it used.

Some small saw millers were being damaged by Coillte's policy, Senator Roche said. On the positive side, he was glad to see good relations between management and the unions.

During their joint presentation, the three unions IMPACT, SIPTU and the CPSU called for a national forest law, where planning aspects of forestry could be regulated.

The increase in the number of forestry plantations requiring planning permission would increase costs, involve long delays and retard progress, Mr Shay Cody said, speaking for the delegation. The requirement for planning for plantations permission is to be reduced from 200 hectares to 70.

The "essential dynamics" of the forest industry could not be sustained in that kind of regime, the unions said. A comprehensive and effective code of practice administered by the Forest Service, enforced by a requirement that compliance was a condition of eligibility for payment of grants could be a better approach, they said.

Agricultural, forestry and social" welfare support programmes should also be co-ordinated to ensure that land availability for forestry was not "impeded", the unions said. The delegation called for road development to improve transportation, a public relations exercise to improve the company's image, and a dividend payment to shareholders which took due account of investment for growth.

The Government was due to publish a report which stated that around a million hectares of poor agricultural land would be better used for forestry, Mr Coady continued. While expressing concern about the "land hunger", he said the company was "taking a back seat" and was not "generating or engineering" a spiral in land prices.

Referring to environmental issues, Mr Michael Doyle, of IMPACT, said the unions would be concerned about the "negative criticism" aimed at Coillte, much of which had "no scientific back ground". Mr Tadhg Curtis, of SIPTU, said that Ireland was still the least afforested member of the EU.

The committee is due to hear a presentation from Coillte management shortly.