Mr. Gerard Murphy:

The Deputy's suggestion about uplands is good. Can we actually plant in upland areas to control floods? Again, that is a different type of forestry and what we would term ecosystem services. There is this notion of looking at forests in a wider way, not just for timber production. One needs to find some payments system which would encourage and incentivise producers to go into some of these areas. That is an option we spoke about earlier around afforestation.

Forests have a significant role to play in flood mitigation. One has to be careful that it is done in the right areas, however, because some lands have high biodiversity values without putting trees on them. One has to consider mineral soils and so forth. There are certain areas where this might work. The one I am keen on exploring more is the payment for ecosystem services. We are doing some work on natural capital accounting where we are looking at a much more diverse view of our forests. It is not just looking at them for timber production but carbon and biodiversity. The key element is to see how one can incentivise and generate sufficient capital to be able to do these sorts of projects.