Over 250 people have attended a public meeting about forestry in the Landmark Hotel in Carrick-on-Shannon tonight.
It was aimed at those who had extensive damage to their plantations during Storm Eowyn.
Olive Leavy, the national co-ordinator of the Irish Forest Owners (IFO), told the meeting she deeply empathises with those who have lost significant amounts of forestry as she has lost some herself in Co Westmeath.
Derek McCabe, the chairman of the IFO, said the weather event caused devastation.
He said the organisation's goal is to salvage people's timber and help their replant their land.
He said he's disappointed neither Agriculture Minister Martin Heydon nor Junior Minister for Forestry, Michael Healy-Rae, attended tonight's meeting.
He said years of work was undone in a matter of moments during the storm.
McCabe said the damage is significant but support from the government is insufficient, given the scale of the event.
He said financial aid is urgently needed, describing the issue as a natural disaster.
He criticised Minister Healy-Rae for insisting that felling licences are required for forestry that that was knocked down during the storm. He said the Minister said licence applications would be processed quickly, but he said he had little faith in that.
John Casey, from Teagasc, described the forestry damage caused during the storm as "unprecedented".
He said significantly more damage was caused during Storm Eowyn than Storm Darwyn in 2014.
He said Teagasc would be holding regional events over the coming weeks to educate people on "timber-recovery".
McCabe, meanwhile, claimed Coillte has an unfair dominance in the market. He said their position suppresses the market and leaves small forestry owners, like those at the meeting, in difficulty.
He said Coillte has an unfair advantage in that it can sell its timber by volume, while small forest owners can only sell by weight. He called on the government to allow small forest owners to also allow them sell by volume.
He called on the government to intervene to make sure Coillte's market dominance does not "continue unchecked".
He said private forest owners must have "parity of esteem" with Coillte, which he repeatedly referred to as a "state entity".
McCabe said we are seeing a dip in timber price at the moment, given the amount on the market.
He said we need to stabilise the market and said government intervention is needed.
He said a "minimum price" for timber should be introduced.
Several councillors attended the meeting, including Roscommon's Sean Moylan, Leitrim's Gary Prior and Sligo's Michael Clarke.
There was a presentation from TreeMetrics - a forest monitoring company based in Cork.
Co-founder Enda Keane said it's "nuts" the government is insisting people have felling licences for forestry blown down in the storm.
"What a joke," he added.
He estimates over four million tonnes of timber had been knocked down in the storm in the six counties of Galway, Leitrim, Roscommon, Sligo, Longford and Cavan.
He said his businesses does a lot of work overseas, and that timber prices normally drop by 40 to 60 per cent after a storm.
His colleague, Garrett Mullooly, from Strokestown, showed satellite images of the damage caused by the storm to forestry.
He described the damage as "colossal".
He encouraged people not to be "despondent" in this "catastrophe".
He said it had happened in other countries in the past and they recovered.
McCabe told the meeting there is a lot of "sharp practice" in the industry, with a lot of middle men, etc, and encouraged forestry owners to show due diligence as they try to salvage value for their timber.
Roscommon-Galway TD Michael Fitzmaurice (Independent Ireland) said he has been told by the department that 50 per cent of forest owners have felling licences at the moment.
He said there was "a big push-back" from the department over the issue.
He said they had insisted they would still be requiring felling licences for windblown timber.
He said they would not be following the stance taken in Wales, which is not requiring felling licences to deal with storm-hit timber (the meeting was also told several other countries are adopting this policy in response to Storm Eowyn).
Deputy Fitzmaurice said the department told them they would expedite licence applications - that they'd be processed in 45 to 50 days - but he said he was highly sceptical about this. He said he didn't have "a lot of faith in the licencing system".
He said a delegation needs to go to the EU to ask them to intervene, suggesting Ireland is following an EU-wide policy. He further noted that Wales is not in the EU.
He said he felt very sorry for people who had invested "their pensions" in forestry.
He said he would keep the pressure on the government over the issue, but said he needed support.
The meeting heard from several forest owners about the impact the storm has had on their plantations.
Concluding the meeting, McCabe said the IFO would be a conduit for ordinary forestry owners in the catastrophe.
To widespread applause, he reiterated his claim that it is utterly appalling that neither ministers Heydon nor Healy-Rae were present.
He said Healy-Rae's tenure as forestry minister would be determined by his response to this crisis.
Fitzmaurice said his party colleague, MEP Ciaran Mullooly, was seeking a meeting with the European Commissioner over the issue.
