Mr. Paddy Purser:

I thank members for the opportunity to speak to the committee today. We look forward to dealing with questions from members afterwards. Pro Silva Ireland is an all-Ireland organisation supporting the use of alternative forest management systems to the clear-fell system. These alternative systems are generally called continuous cover forestry, CCF, and these systems do not clear-fell the forest but instead involve thinning trees periodically while allowing the retained forest to grow and develop. Pro Silva Ireland is part of a wider European network of Pro Silva organisations across 27 countries. We have a diverse and dynamic membership of foresters, forest owners, contractors, ecologists, wood scientists, artists and others.

Well-managed forests can provide many functions. They can produce timber for domestic and industrial use, be places of recreation while enhancing our landscape, protect and clean our water while helping prevent flooding, stabilise and improve our soils, harbour and enrich biodiversity, sequester carbon, shelter our farms and be places of inspiration, wonder and calm.

Successive forestry programmes and forestry practice in Ireland has concentrated on the timber-production function. This has resulted in the successful establishment of a vibrant timber processing sector and in vital job creation in rural communities. The clear-fell system has been used in efficiently producing timber to feed this industry. However, this management system struggles to satisfactorily deliver the other services that society requires from forests and this is at the heart of recent protests against forestry in Leitrim, for example. It is clear that society wants more from Irish forests in the form of the aforementioned multiple benefits. That has been recognised in the forestry sector and many positive initiatives have developed over the past 20 years in that regard. In Pro Silva Ireland we believe that CCF will deliver these multiple benefits in a sustainable way that will rebuild a forest culture, be profitable and at the same time deliver a range of environmental services. We know from the experience of CCF forests managed in Ireland, and more so from those under longer-term CCF management in Europe, that it is possible to sustain commercial timber production while delivering the multiple benefits. This committee's role is to consider action on climate change and what measures can be adopted to mitigate this hugely serious issue. Well-managed forests are excellent carbon sinks and we are paying the price both globally and nationally for both current and historic deforestation.

How we manage our forests also has a significant effect on the efficiency of carbon sequestration. CCF is an efficient means of optimising carbon storage in forests as it avoids the large-scale release of soil carbon that occurs when plantations are clear-felled, given that more than 70% of forest carbon is held in the forest soil. It produces a higher percentage of high-quality and long-life timber products, in which sequestered carbon is locked for a longer timeframe. Moreover, it increases forest biodiversity in general and provides permanent forest habitats that keep carbon locked in the forest and results in more resilient forests, with lower biotic and abiotic risks.

Planting new forests has been widely recognised as a way in which society can take positive climate action. We must, however, maintain a focus on delivering the multiple benefits of forestry, rather than just one function, whether timber production or carbon sequestration. The question of monocultures inevitably arises in this regard. Pro Silva Ireland is deeply concerned with the continued predominance of monocultures in Irish forestry. Even aged monocultural crops are incapable of delivering the wider long-term social and environmental benefits of forestry. There is also considerable concern about their resilience in the face of climate change. The very forests planted to mitigate climate change could become casualties of it. Concerns about the sustainability of monocultures are not new and at present in central Europe, bark beetles devastate large areas of monocultural spruce plantations, which suffer drought stress directly related to climate change. In Ireland, we have our own problems, with ash dieback disease devastating monocultural ash plantations.

To date, most policy initiatives to encourage or require greater levels of diverse planting have ended up compartmentalising different species into small monocultures. We believe that new planting must be robustly mixed with greater utilization of native species and that we should cease planting monocultures. It is important that expectations be managed in respect of what is possible from CCF. Forests, by their nature, take time to plan, develop, grow and transform. Similarly, if we want to achieve a cultural change in Irish forestry, this will also take time and investment. No magic wand can be waved to transform Irish forests overnight. It will take long-term planning, with a refocusing of forest policy and programmes. There are significant challenges in the form of training and capacity building within the forestry sector, transforming existing monocultures into more diverse forests, maintaining commercial timber production and associated jobs through the necessary changes, the reliance on private landowners and private forestry businesses to deliver new forests, educating wider society of the multiple benefits of forestry, managing invasive and unsustainable deer populations, as well as restructuring inappropriately located and designed forests.

Tackling climate change and specifically reducing our carbon and greenhouse gas emissions is a multifaceted problem and no single policy, such as planting more forests, will solve it. Nevertheless, well-designed, well-managed and resilient forests can play their part in tackling this great problem of our time while at the same time doing much more.