Dr. Elaine McGoff:

Forestry is the third most significant pressure on water quality and it disproportionately impacts on our high-status waterbodies, that is, our best of the best, or the sorts of rivers that are pictured on tourist brochures and that everyone wants to see. We have gone from having 500 high-status waterbodies 30 years ago to having 20. Things are really bad and forestry is one of the main pressures on that.

One of the main issues relates to something called legacy forestry. On many of these sites, trees were planted where they should never have been planted and they have been there for decades. It is problematic to figure out what to do with them, but the approach so far has been, to a certain extent, to ignore them or to say it is problematic and that, therefore, we will not address them. An Taisce is a prescribed body for forestry, which means that people who apply for a forestry licence are referred to us and we have a look at the application. We look at a couple of hundred forestry applications a year. The water protection measures, as part of the licensing system, are incredibly weak. They rely on standard protocols to protect water but we can see, given forestry constitutes the third most prevalent pressure, that they are not working. The river basin management plan refers to existing policies and measures but it is somewhat pointless to point to them given, clearly, they are not working.

What we would like to see - An Taisce and SWAN are in agreement on this - is sensitivity mapping. Similar to the catchment approach, it would involve examining a given waterbody to see whether it could take a certain level of afforestation, where it would be too sensitive for trees to be planted, and where they should and should not be planted. We would also like to see a specific water framework directive assessment for any afforestation licences where they will not have to rely on these standard measures and can say for definite that there will not be an impact on water quality. Moreover, we need a plan for legacy forestry. We cannot keep ignoring it because it is an ongoing pressure on our most pristine waterbodies and the animals that live in them, such as the freshwater pearl mussel. This is especially important in light of climate change mitigation, whereby there is quite a strong push to plant more trees. That is great if the trees are being planted in the right place but we need to ensure they will be, and the sensitivity mapping is the key to that.