Mr. Paddy Purser:

I thank Deputy Cronin. Her question on how society value forests is a cultural one. I do not know if I have all the answers to it. We are a culture which fell out of love with forests. Forestry is a relatively new thing in communities again. We should not forget that at the turn of the last century we were down to having 1.5% forest cover. It is now at 11%. The European average is between 20% and 30% range and in some countries it is more than 50%. We are far behind in terms of having a forestry culture. Many of the forests we have, particularly the private forests, are first generation forests. We have not gained access to them and they have not been thinned. They have not yet appeared from behind the hedgerow. That is a slow process that will take time.

A game changer in how we value forests would be on the natural capital front, by recognising and valuing this natural capital that is provided by forests and offering that value to the forest owner. If the forest owner was not dependent on the timber income to deliver all the other products and services from the forest, and in a similar way to the results-based schemes referred to in the other presentations, forests could deliver much more efficiently and forest owners could be rewarded for the delivery of all those other functions which make forests magical and beautiful places to be in. That aspect is being discussed in Project Woodland, which should issue guidance on it.

Regarding deer, it is a difficult but critical topic. Deer do not respect individual land ownerships. They range across huge areas of land and multiple land ownerships. With respect to the way culling is licensed, plenty of deer culling takes place but not in as organised and systematic way. What we need are localised round-up deer management groups where neighbours co-operate, targets are set and people work together to achieve a particular deer density target.

It is a particularly big issue for native woodlands. Native species are struggling to regenerate because of browsing pressure and the same applies to existing native woodlands.

There was a question relating to fire and the Deputy was 100% correct. Mature native woodlands are far less vulnerable to fire. In fact, they are almost repellent to fire as it sweeps through the landscape. We have a problem with younger native woodlands that are recently planted because we still have ground vegetation. The preceding ground vegetation is still present on site. Young native woodlands can be vulnerable. However, it is different for mature native woodlands because they are more diverse and have a higher moisture content at ground level. They tend to be bypassed by fire or stop fire in the landscape in Ireland. The same applies in other western European countries. An example of this was in Portugal, where fires ripped through eucalyptus and pine plantations but when they came to a riparian native woodland, they stopped. Such fires might hop over native woodland but the surviving forests in the landscape are the native forests.