Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 13 December 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Forestry Strategic Vision: Coillte
Mr. Mark Carlin:
We are fortunate as we have 6,000 forest properties throughout the country. We are well-established in most areas and we have a good dispersal of recreation sites. The 260 recreation sites, 12 forest parks and 3,000 km of way-marked trails are fairly well dispersed around the country. We intend to double our recreation offering and one of the things we will do is assess where we need to bring additional recreation sites. During the Covid-19 pandemic it was clear to us - with a tripling of visitors to our forests and subsequent to the restrictions easing, the visitor numbers have remained high - that people have come into contact with our forests again and it is especially important to take advantage of forests close to towns and villages to build out further recreation in those areas. We will do that assessment in the next months and year to understand where is the best place to go with additional recreation.