Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 22 June 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Ash Dieback and its Impact on the Private Forestry Sector: Discussion

Mr. Simon White:

Absolutely. I would really like to see that. Teagasc has an important role to play. As I said, good decision-making depends on good information being in front of the decision makers. That must be scientific and true information. It must be factual. We must get our research institute out there and in action, finding out where we are going to go with this. We must find out what species we will plant and the way we want to do it. We have seen the problems with monoculture and we need mixed forests. We are, for example, sitting on a time bomb with our conifers if this beetle comes in. We need to look at phytosanitary security and investigation into the ways to protect the trees we have. We are importing a huge amount of timber into the country, and this poses a major risk to our growing trees.

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