Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As I said, it is a legal contract which Coillte have entered into, and it is not for 100,000 ha of land. That is our ambition now to 2050, but the legal contract Coillte has entered into over the next five years amounts, on average, to buying 700 ha a year for five years for afforestation. It is legally contracted to do that. What I am doing, and what the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, and I have done, is to meet Coillte and we will engage with it to see how we can support Coillte in doing afforestation in the form of the State directly supporting Coillte and in enabling Coillte to partner directly with farmers to enable farmers to do more too.