Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will answer first and then the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, will come in. It is important to trace how this has evolved. It has evolved, first, from Coillte's desire to become involved in afforestation once again which we fully support. It stopped afforesting back in 2004. It played a massive role in getting forestry up and running in this country and being a key driver in developing forestry. In 2004, it stopped doing afforestation. Forestry has not been in a good place in recent years and we want a real step change in developing the potential for forestry and particularly enabling its capacity to contribute to climate change.

In its strategic vision for contributing to the State's objective to deliver 400,000 ha of new forestry by 2050, Coillte outlined how it plans to do 100,000 ha of that. It published that strategic vision in April 2022. It also outlined how it would deliver that 100,000 ha of forestry through a mixture of Coillte investment and engaging private investment. It made it clear that was part of its approach. It was covered in the media at the time. Coillte also briefed me, as Minister, on its strategic vision at the end of 2021. It indicated it wanted to go for 100,000 ha and that it wanted to use a mixture of funding approaches to do that. Coillte also briefed many others. It engaged very broadly on that. It published its draft strategic vision in April and there was widespread media coverage at that time, including its plan to engage private investment to help fund the 100,000 ha. Its representatives met and briefed various Oireachtas Members. It held a briefing at the end of May in the audiovisual room for all Oireachtas Members.

In then put in place a process engaging with the Irish Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, as to how it might do that. My understanding is that ISIF agreed it would work with it to establish a fund. ISIF, which is Government money, agreed to invest €25 million in that. Coillte, working with ISIF, then engaged in an open tendering process as required by law to establish how that fund would be managed and put together. Coming out of that, the agreement was signed, I believe, on 15 or 16 December, after considerable engagement with ISIF. On the completion of the tendering process, it then signed that agreement with ISIF to put together a €200 million investment fund to be managed by Gresham House over five years, covering up to 12,000 ha of forestry. This will be 8,000 ha of mature forestry, not Coillte forestry but private forestry not in State ownership at the moment, and the acquisition of 3,000 ha to 4,000 ha of new land to afforest under that fund over a five-year period. It officially launched that at the start of January.

As part of that €200 million fund, €25 million comes from ISIF. I believe the fund at the moment is up to €35 million, with an additional €10 million of private investment. Coillte has also sought consent from me, as Minister, to invest €10 million of its own funds in that. We have forwarded that to NewERA for its assessment and consideration. It will probably take a few months for it to come back but once it does, we will then consider and make a decision on that.

Coillte have now signed up to that. It is very much in line with the approach it set out. It has been very much in the public domain from as early as April of last year. It then worked with ISIF to put in place a tendering process. We have examined, assessed and engaged with Coillte. The most recent meeting was last week to examine the details of this approach, which will ultimately account for 3.5% of its target for 2050 and 1% of the State's target. It is not our preferred way forward. We want to engage and I have asked Coillte to consider how it can work directly with farmers and partner with them. We want to explore the opportunities for how the State can work directly with farmers and the potential for the State to buy land.