Pippa Hackett (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy Carthy says, the programme for Government commitment is 8,000 ha, and as everyone knows, we have missed that for the last year and we were only in for half of the previous year. If we are to be honest, we plunged into the deep end, and we have been working our way out of that deep end of the pool up towards the shallow end - slower than we would like - but we are making our way there. While we did not hit the target last year, we simply do not know what will be the case this year because there are no guarantees, but based on our projections on the afforestation licences we intend to issue, we could hit 9,000 ha if the trees are planted. It is fair enough to say that. I would love to see us planting 12,000 ha.