Pippa Hackett (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The next round of the afforestation programme needs to be up and running and ready for 2023. That does not stop us doing things in the interim. I have indicated that we are looking at amending the native woodland forestry grant for the autumn to try to encourage people to plant, perhaps for specific reasons to repair margins and so forth, where they will need additional funding to do so. We have a planting on public land scheme, which has been quite well-received by public bodies.

Engaging with the farming community in terms of the value of timber and of planting wood, and even of just creating some legacy forests on their farms, is important. The Senator and I are both farmers. I speak to farmers, as does he. There are pressures from other sectors. We cannot deny that. The question is whether a farmer will plant his or her forestry for 20, 30 or 40 years or whether he or she can rent to a neighbouring farmer who is out of it in five or ten years. That is a pressure and that does exist. Farmers say to me that they have to make that call. What does that mean going forward? How do we entice farmers? How do we encourage and support them more? I do not know; we have to look at that. Certainly, it is important because we are going to be wholly reliant on farmers and landowners going forward. The State does not own any more lands to plant on, essentially, so it will come down to private landowners to deal with that.

We will be introducing a communications programme on that under Project Woodland. Again, that is in essence engaging with everyone in the State. It is about what the citizens of the State and we as a nation want from our trees. Do we want trees that have to deliver only for timber production or do they have to deliver for climate action, biodiversity, water quality, communities' amenities and so forth? We might, as a State, decide that we want more amenity forests and we are not too worried about other aspects but we must come to that decision and that process has started. We have Irish Rural Link engaging with communities, particularly those which were affected by forestry in the past. That is the start of that process and that will continue for the remainder of the year.

We have to have a new forestry strategy in place before the middle or end of next year and that is what we are working towards. All of that will factor in. Are we going to get farmers to plant? Are we going to meet our targets this year? There is no way we are going to meet those targets. We absolutely have to get on top of that, however. We are well shy, in a cumulative way, in terms of what we should have planted last year or the year before, and indeed, we are going to be well off the mark this year.