Marcella Corcoran Kennedy (Offaly, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Forestry Programme 2014-20 is due to end next year. Has the Minister of State a new works programme or will the Department be waiting on CAP to be announced before he does that? If the Minister of State is waiting for that will he be looking at the plantation of forestry in a broader context rather than focusing on the obvious places such as farms since they have the largest amount of land with potential for plantation? Will the Minister of State indicate if he will be broadening the programmes out to groups such as Crann or the Woodland League, or to citizens? If every household in the State planted a tree, if every school planted ten trees and if every GAA field planted 20 trees along its perimeter, we could have a forest very quickly. Will this kind of thinking form part of the forestry programme? In my area Bord na Móna is looking for biomass. Will the Minister of State also look to encourage this in certain areas where there is a requirement for biomass?

With regard to the type of monocultural plantations, on which Deputy Martin Kenny so eloquently articulates on a regular basis, if moving away from monoculture is the thing to do should we go for polyculture altogether? Might that have in some way prevented ash dieback? Did having the same species planted on many acres have anything to do with it? I know it is something that happened throughout Europe but did the fact it was a monocultural plantation cause the problem in the first place? Has there been a shift in thinking away from monoculture to polyculture?

People who were badly affected by the ash dieback certainly feel aggrieved and there is no doubt about it. They feel they have not been listened to and that they were encouraged to plant those trees and that proper procedures were not in place to monitor the trees being imported. They wound up bearing the brunt of all of this. What can be done about breeding a resistant strain? Is it being considered, possibly by Teagasc? The people who planted them could have a role in this. Perhaps the seedlings could be taken. With regard to forest machinery, there are differing views on the type of forestry and machinery that can be used and whether a new TAMS is something that could be considered to assist in grant aiding something they might be able to avail of. Would people be allowed to put it back into grassland? Has consideration been given to this?