Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister went into detail about the conference about timber he attended. That was an important conference that I missed. We are being told that 70% or 75% of homes will be made of timber by 2050. It will be the norm when we are building homes. Has the Department a figure regarding how much wood is required to service that industry? The industry is evolving and changing. It is decarbonising. It is going away from steel and concrete. It is trying to ensure carbon efficiency.

We now need to ensure we have enough planting of spruce in particular, which is a building product, to ensure we reach those criteria. We export some of it at the moment. In 2040, we will be on a downward spiral while 2050 is the real date. It is by 2050 that the planting happening now will be coming through. How many hectares of spruce would we need to ensure our building industry can be self-sufficient when it comes to that issue, taking into consideration that we will probably have peaked ten years before that?