Peter Cleere (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is my first formal opportunity to congratulate the Minister of State on his role. I wish him well in his endeavours. I see Deputy Danny Healy-Rae is back. I was looking at the Minister of State a minute ago and I saw Danny on the screen talking in the Dáil. The Healy-Raes are ubiquitous.

A lot of what I wanted to cover has been asked, so I will be very brief and give time to other members who want to come in for a second round. The Minister of State noted in his opening statement that we have gone from 1% forest cover in 1900 to almost 12% today. That is the highest it has been in more than 350 years, which shows a lot of work has been done. However, to meet our afforestation targets we need to get to 18% by 2050. Based on that threshold from 1900 until now, it will take between 60 and 80 years to get to that level. How will we get from 12% to 18% to meet our targets based on current levels? We are way short of the 8,000 ha required at the moment.