DEAR SIR: Co Leitrim and surrounding counties are very much “in the eye of the storm” about forestry policy in Ireland.

Here, in recent years, small farmers are unable to get a reasonable income from farming. There is an ageing population and a lot of youth emigration. With heavy hearts, some see the meagre forestry grants as the best possible source of an income.

Government policy is guided by EU directives. EU MEPs are sure that there is a long-time EU policy in place to turn the west of Ireland into a large forest park and a playground for the EU.

Our government’s objective is to increase the percentage of land under forestry from 11% to 18%. Until recent years, forestry plantation grants and annual premiums were confined to farm owners, with a requirement that the applicant must reside within 40 miles of the new plantation.

Not enough farmers were buying into this scheme, so the conniving government, with the tacit support of the supposed opposition, has radically altered the grants situation.

Under recent proposals, non-farmers, finance companies and vulture speculators can now avail of plantation grants and annual payments.

It will not be long before large areas of Co Leitrim and surrounding counties are covered in forests.

Correspondingly, services will decline and the populations will be wiped out.

Very ironically, parties, like Fianna Fail have just begun to shout and roar about this danger. I can safely say that I never once heard any TD, of any party, from Leitrim and surrounding counties raise a voice in the Dáil exposing this scandal.

In the words of the late Brian Lenihan (Sen), they must “come clean with the public” on this vital concern of ours.