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Papers Today
// State Forests Sold
The sale of State forests is not new to Ireland, albeit small in area. Coillte has soild forests and land estimated at €217m since the company was established, with record anual sales of €80m during the period 2005 – 2007.
The area sold is not disclosed in Coillte anual reports but records of post 2002 transactions show that sales averaged approximatly 400ha annually while earlier sales would have been lower. The total area sold is likely to represent less than 3.5% of the Coillte Estate.
The privitisation of Coilte forest but not the land is also not new. For example a significant proportion of the 15,000ha of forestry owned by the Irish Forest Unit Trust [IforUT] was transfered from the Coillte estate in 1995 at a value of €3.6m.
During 2009, Coillte also disposed of immature forests for €33.8m, realising a profit of €25.4m. However, the sale agreement conferred rights on the purchaser to harvest timber at maturity but Coillte retained the rights to the land.
Donal Magner
Irish Farmer’s Journal,
10 March, 2012
Reads: 451
Added: 12/03/2012
Added By: tony
Comments: 3 | Add Comment
// Read Other Articles in Forestry
| Patricia on 17/03/2012 |
Coillte also spent close to a million euros in 2010 – 2011 preparing planning applications for nursing homes at five different Coillte owned locations. All five were turned down, eventually, but two ended up in appeals to An Bord Pleana by vigilant locals or An Taisce. An expnsive waste of money for a project which is driven by privatisation and nothing to do with preserving froests. Article Rating: 1 / 5 |
| Tony on 12/03/2012 |
Less than half the Coillte Estate is actually ’productive’ – hence of the ’good’ new plantings the sales probably represent many times the 3.5% figure. In essence, Coillte creams off the very best forestry, immature, to sell as a long term investment for their and others pension funds and long before they have reached their maximum value, depriving the state of this value after bearing all the costs of establishment. Selling the ’right to harvest timber at maturity’ leaves the land owner – us – stuck with the obligation to replant under law at a significant expense. Then these young plantations can again be sold to continue the cycle of ripping off the taxpayer. We lose the full value of the tens of thousands of hectare of prime timber but must pay the full cost of replanting. And of course as Magner notes, none of this is recorded in Coillte’s Annual Reports. Article Rating: 1 / 5 |
| Tony on 12/03/2012 |
Less than half the Coillte Estate is actually ’productive’ – hence of the ’good’ new plantings the sales probably represent many times the 3.5% figure. In essence, Coillte creams off the very best forestry, immature, to sell as a long term investment for their and others pension funds and long before they have reached their maximum value, depriving the state of this value after bearing all the costs of establishment. Selling the ’right to harvest timber at maturity’ leaves the land owner – us – stuck with the obligation to replant under law at a significant expense. Then these young plantations can again be sold to continue the cycle of ripping off the taxpayer. We lose the full value of the tens of thousands of hectare of prime timber but must pay the full cost of replanting. And of course as Magner notes, none of this is recorded in Coillte’s Annual Reports. Article Rating: 1 / 5 |
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