Dr. Catherine Farrell:

I will say a few words on the mapping system in terms of how we plan our land use and get to grips with what is out there across the full holdings of 80,000 hectares. I will hint at some of the other ecosystem services benefits, such as biodiversity, carbon and then, of course, cultural landscape.

What is a cutaway bog? What sort of landscape does that present to us? For the most part, that is what we are talking about today. It is very different from a raised bog. A lot of people might confuse cutaway bogs. We cannot restore these bogs to active raised bogs. For the greater part of it, one essentially has a new landscape. Peat has been removed so what one has is a very different landscape which has varying depths of peat and varying drainage regimes and, as Mr. Ring hinted, significant areas moving towards wetlands into the future.

When peat production stops in an area, generally, what one is left with is a bare landscape. Within a couple of months of production stopping, we start to see natural colonisation happening across the peatland. This gives rise over time to a range of different habitats, and at this time we are mapping the habitats emerging on the cutaway bogs with a view to determining how all of our bogs will develop in terms of whether they will be wetland or woodland habitat and how those habitats can contribute in lots of senses to carbon services and benefits into the future and also to biodiversity networks. At this point in time, we are of the mind that roughly 30% of our lands would be going towards wetland and the remainder towards scrub-woodland type habitats. The benefits to natural colonisation and, where necessary, targeted rehabilitation is that our lands will be environmentally stabilised and we will have this rich diverse landscape. Also, that will have an impact on other services such as water quality into the future.

I will show members an example of one of the sites we have. Ballycon bog is adjacent to the Mount Lucas wind farm site, which some members may have been on. It is roughly 200 hectares and has been out of peat production for more than ten years. We have zoned this area as a biodiversity area. In terms of how we map these areas, we have an extensive GIS database. We have a layer which identifies the generic land use in the area. This is a biodiversity area, with some Coillte plantation to the west of the site. The map on the top right shows the current habitats on the site, so it is a mosaic of wetland and emerging scrub. The map on the lower left is a lidar map that can inform us as to where wetlands will form. The one on the lower right is basically the future of this particular site and how it will look. We have a database and knowledge on more than 130 of our bog areas. We have a lot of information as to how these sites will develop into the future.

We talked about the cutaway bogs. We also have in our land bank roughly 2,500 hectares of bog that was never brought fully into peat production. We have identified those areas and have started a process of bog restoration on these sites. The benefits in terms of restoring active raised bog habitat is that a lot of these sites have been incorporated into the national network of special areas of conservation and natural heritage areas. The other side of it is the potential to use these sites for carbon offset into the future. The sites currently drained may continue to release carbon, but once one rewets these sites, one restores the carbon sequestration potential of the areas.

In terms of the carbon issue, obviously we will leave a lot of peat in the ground on our cutaway sites. We want to see what can happen when we rewet those areas. Can we maintain the carbon on site and, where possible, can we start to return these areas to carbon sequestration sites? We have invested in a number of greenhouse gas monitoring projects which link up with UCD and the Environmental Protection Agency. Hopefully, they will inform our land use decisions into the future.