The forestry industry complained yesterday that the new Rural Environment Protection Scheme for farmers would further undermine a national timber industry policy already threatened by a fall-off in planting.
The REPS scheme, under which farmers agree to farm in an environmentally sensitive way, received a major boost last week with the announcement that farmers are to be paid more money for joining it from the end of 1999.
Mr Tommy McCabe, director of the Irish Forest Industry Chain, the industry's umbrella body, expressed concern at the extension of the REPS scheme for a further 15 years. "This fundamentally alters the economics of the scheme, to the detriment of forestry as an alternative land use for farmers.
"With the payback period on their investment now extended to 15 years, the REPS is a much more attractive and economically viable package for those that would previously have been considered borderline cases," he said.
"The new reforms would mean a further 400,000 hectares of suitable land denied to forestry." Mr McCabe said that this would compound an already critical fall-off in planting levels. "At stake is the creation of more than 11,000 new jobs and the generation of billions of pounds worth of economic activity in rural Ireland over coming decades," he said.
He called on the Government to redress the imbalance that had arisen by including forestry as a qualifying activity under REPS.
Last night on RTE radio, Mr Danny Carroll, head of the REPS section in the Department of Agriculture, said afforestation could not be made part of REPS because the European Commission would not allow it.
But, he said, the Department would be meeting the forestry industry, Teagasc, the farm and food development authority and REPS planners to see if they could make the schemes more compatible.