Pippa Hackett (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Leddin. I thank him as well for his vote of confidence, which is much appreciated. He is right that in the programme for Government there is a commitment concerning small-scale native planting. He may have heard earlier about the small-scale forestry scheme launched today to support farmers to plant 1 ha of native woodlands. In fact, if they have any waterways, rivers or anything like that running through their farms, they can plant an additional 1 ha. Both these options are available without needing to have applied for a forestry licence. I think there will be good interest in this scheme and it might well entice farmers who have never considered planting trees on their farms to do so. This one hectare can be broken up into smaller plots on the farm. It might not just be one block of trees, but different sizes of planting in certain corners and so forth. There is good flexibility here. This initiative might well support farmers to engage with tree planting, perhaps for the first time, which would be great.

Turning to agroforestry, this is quite an exciting part of the programme. We had agroforestry in the last programme for Government, but it was only supported for five years. There may not have been so much of an uptake. Even in recent years, though, we see more engagement, including on social media, regarding what agroforestry can deliver. It enables farmers to plant trees with much greater space between them. Farmers could potentially still have livestock grazing between them because it is possible to fence off trees. If trees were planted more linearly, potentially tillage crops could be grown between them as well. There is, therefore, a great deal of flexibility with this scheme. Additionally, agroforestry also offers farmers, if they are organic, the opportunity to retain their organic payment because the land will still be managed organically and producing food of some description. Of course, as is the case with all forestry, the basic payment scheme, BPS, will go with this as well. I think this is an attractive option for farmers who may not be entirely sure about undertaking plantation forestry. Anecdotally, from talking with Teagasc advisers, there seems to be a great deal of interest in this scheme. I think it will be welcomed and it will be good to see more of this type of planting around.

The Deputy is correct that we need to embrace timber in our construction sector. The event I was at today in Avondale was the second year of a conference all about using timber. The Deputy will be aware that his colleague, Deputy Matthews, is very supportive of it. My colleagues in the Seanad last year brought forward a motion on using timber in construction. We are not brilliant at doing this in Ireland. To be honest, we are pretty bad. Even today, a comparison with Scotland is instructive. Some 80% or 90% of new builds there have timber frames, while we stand at about 25%. There is, therefore, much work to be done here. This is why I launched the timber in construction steering group today. It has been established to look at all the opportunities, but also to deal with some of the challenges, including those around fire regulations and several other issues. These are the challenges we need to unlock to enable our country to go forward with all this mass of timber that will come online in the next 20 to 30 years and continue beyond then.

Turning to the state aid process for this programme, as the Deputy said, there was a great deal of pressure from the environmental side to get a bit more balance into it.

As regards Coillte which is, as the Deputy said, the State forestry company, it also has ambitions to increase its afforestation rates. It wants to create 100,000 ha of new forests. It also wants to take a balanced approach. Its strategy is still out for public consultation. Coillte's aim for new plantations is also 50:50. It wants to increase the carbon store on its existing estate but is also looking at some of those legacy issues that plagued Irish forestry over the years. It is looking at redesigning 30,000 ha of areas that have been planted with trees where it has not worked or which have just not delivered. It is looking at rewetting, rewilding or redesigning of certain areas. Coillte's strategy to date is proactive, progressive and aligns quite well with our overall ambition as a country. It currently manages approximately 25% of its land for biodiversity and wants to move to 50% to be managed for nature over the course of the next number of decades. Good things are happening there.