Ms Imelda Hurley:

I thank the Chairman. I wish members a good evening and thank them for the opportunity to engage with the committee on Coillte’s forestry strategic vision. I am accompanied by Mr. Mark Carlin, managing director of Coillte Forest. I will begin with a short overview of Coillte.

Coillte is the largest forester in Ireland, responsible for managing 440,000 ha, that is, 7% of the land area of Ireland. We are the largest producer of certified wood, a sustainable resource. We are also the largest provider of outdoor recreation in the country. We enable wind energy, we manufacture panel products and we undertake nature rehabilitation projects of scale. The Coillte estate accounts for around half of Ireland’s forests, with a wide variety of habitats, from conifer, mixed and broadleaf forests, to open upland bogs and heath lands, to lakes and rivers. Since 1989, Coillte has continuously evolved and we have enabled the development of a vibrant forestry and wood products sector that supports rural employment throughout Ireland. While we have always managed our forests sustainably, we believe that the growing climate challenge requires a greater focus.

We employ 840 staff and support approximately 1,200 direct contractors, while the overall forest sector supports approximately 9,000 jobs, mostly in rural Ireland. Coillte’s forestry business underpins a thriving forest products sector, which supports around €2.5 billion of economic activity annually. Wood is a valuable commodity and is used in the construction of our homes, in pallets which help move our products around, in fencing and lifestyle products for our gardens and farms and in the manufacture of panel-board products like oriented strand board, OSB, and medium-density fibreboard, MDF, which is used in furniture. Using Irish wood and wood-based products for construction is a climate efficient and sustainable substitute for conventional carbon intensive products, such as concrete and steel.

At present, Ireland has one of the lowest levels of forest cover in Europe, at approximately 11.6%, in comparison with a European average of over 40%. We welcome the Government’s new forestry programme, worth €1.3 billion, the largest investment to date by the State in afforestation.

Coillte is comprised of three operational segments, namely, Coillte Forest, land solutions, and Medite Smartply. Coillte Forest is responsible for growing forests sustainably to provide multiple benefits to society, including the production of quality wood and wood products. Our forest estate has both Forest Stewardship Council, FSC, and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification, PEFC, accreditation. Over 90,000 ha of our estate, that is, 20%, is currently managed primarily for biodiversity with these areas containing a wide variety of habitats including native forest, mixed forest, blanket bog, raised bog and wet and dry heath. We have developed a science-based approach called BioForest, which classifies the ecological value of the biodiversity areas in our estate, and allows us to develop ecological and silvicultural plans to enhance or restore sites to improve biodiversity.

Our land solutions division provides innovative commercial solutions to support industries such as renewable energy, housing, healthcare, education, infrastructure development, water and tourism. In 2021, with the ESB, we launched a new joint venture renewable energy company, FuturEnergy Ireland, to develop wind energy, enabling Ireland to combat climate change and contribute to more sustainable living. Coillte Nature is also part of our overall land solutions division. It operates on a not-for-profit basis and is dedicated to the restoration, regeneration and rehabilitation of nature through large-scale projects across four strategic themes, namely, afforesting, restoring, regenerating and rehabilitating.

Our Medite Smartply division consists of manufacturing mills in Clonmel, for Medite and Waterford for Smartply, which produce engineered wood-based construction panels.

The climate emergency is recognised as the greatest challenge we face as a society. There is an urgent need for Ireland to meet stretching climate action targets and the Irish forestry sector and Coillte have an important role to play. Recognising this, in April we launched a new vision for Coillte’s forests.

Rooted in science, our new vision aims to sustainably balance the multiple benefits from our forests across four strategic pillars, namely, climate, wood, nature and people. Our ambition is to create new forests, manage our existing forests for greater carbon capture and provide more habitats to protect and enhance biodiversity. We will increase the number of incredible forest recreation spaces for everyone to enjoy. We will support the creation of new homes by continuing to deliver sustainable Irish wood products that will help to decarbonise our built environment. In developing our new vision, we identified that forests can deliver benefits that support many of the 17 UN sustainable development goals. This was our framework to consider the multiple benefits of forestry and can be summarised across the four strategic pillars of climate, nature, wood and people.

We established 11 core ambitions that we propose to deliver. For climate, we aim to enable the creation of 100,000 ha of new forests by 2050, thereby supporting the delivery of the national afforestation target and creating a carbon sink of approximately 18 million tonnes of CO2; to manage our existing forest estate to capture an additional 10 million tonnes of CO2 in our forests and soils by 2050; to redesign 30,000 ha of peatland forests by 2050 through a programme of rewetting or rewilding for climate and ecological benefits; to produce sustainable wood products that can displace over 2 million tonnes of CO2 every year by not having to use carbon intensive products such as concrete and steel; and to enable the generation of an additional 1 GW of renewable wind energy by 2030, enough to power half a million homes in Ireland, via our joint venture company, FuturEnergy Ireland.

For wood, we aim to produce a sustainable supply of 25 million cu. m of Irish certified timber that can help Ireland achieve its housing ambition of 300,000 new homes by 2030; to promote the use and benefits of wood products to help increase the level of timber homes in Ireland from 20% to 80% by 2050; and to develop innovative wood products to meet the growing demand for sustainable materials to support the bio-economy.

For nature, we aim to increase the area of our forest estate to be managed primarily for nature from 20% to 30% by 2025, which is an area of over 140,000 ha; and to enhance and restore the existing biodiversity areas in our estate by carrying out nature conservation projects to improve their ecological value. For the long term, we will continue to redesign areas of our existing estate that could be managed for biodiversity, targeting that 50% of Coillte’s estate is managed primarily for nature.

For people, we aim to support the creation of 1,200 direct and indirect new jobs in rural communities to enable the just transition to a low carbon economy in Ireland and to enable the investment of €100 million to create world-class visitor destinations by 2030 to support the growth in tourism and recreation in Ireland.

We also aim to double the number of recreation areas to 500 nationally, enhancing local communities and contributing to people’s well-being. This is a vision that aims to deliver the multiple benefits from our forests to the people of Ireland. It is a very ambitious plan that will require significant investment and, therefore, it is important to note that to achieve all of this, Coillte needs to be financially strong and economically sustainable. We have made significant progress in realising our vision.

I will turn to the benefits of forests for climate. We are fully committed to supporting the delivery of Ireland’s climate action plan, which recognises the importance of forests and wood, and the positive impact they make in sequestering and storing carbon. Coillte has the capacity to increase the carbon sink by creating new forests. Conifer forests grow very well in Ireland and sequester CO2 quickly and are, therefore, a wonderful carbon sink. Broadleaves, although they grow much more slowly, and sequester CO2 more slowly, are a good long-term store of carbon. It will, therefore, be important to create new productive conifer forests and broadleaf forests in our future plans. Our partnership with the Nature Trust is creating new native woodlands across the country. It is also essential to understand how we should better manage our peatland forests. We do not create new forests in these areas today as we better understand the climate implications. Today, a proportion of these peatland forests present a carbon emission risk, which can be mitigated through forest redesign, either rewetting or rewilding, as is most appropriate to each site. Our Wild Western Peatlands project will restore and rehabilitate approximately 2,100 ha of Atlantic blanket bog and wet heath, currently planted with spruce and pine forests in Derryclare, County Galway. This project will not only restore an important habitat, but will also enable us to further develop the expertise required for the restoration and rehabilitation of western peatland forests.

I will now speak to the benefits of forests for wood. Globally, construction represents 37% of global energy related CO2 emissions. There is a sharp focus on these emissions and the embodied carbon in our buildings. Today, we understand that wood products have the lowest embodied carbon of any building material, with timber-framed buildings being 2.5 to three times more carbon efficient than traditional builds. In addition to the carbon benefits, modern methods of construction with wood are much faster and cleaner, produce less waste, require less labour and are more cost-efficient and, therefore, it is clear that wood should be used as the material of choice in construction. In November, we co-hosted our first Build with Wood: the Pathway to Net Zero conference with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, to highlight the role the forests and forest products sector can play in decarbonising the built environment and addressing our housing needs. We were also pleased to note the motion regarding wood for construction debated in the Seanad recently, and the proposal to form a working group across the Departments of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and Enterprise, Trade and Employment. We believe the establishment of a cross-departmental working group is essential to facilitating an increased level of wood-based construction.

Moving on to the benefits of forests for nature, we were delighted to have participated in the recent Citizens' Assembly on Biodiversity Loss, where we talked about our ambitions to increase biodiversity across our estate. In addition to the significant increase in the area that will be managed primarily for nature, we are carrying out significant biodiversity restoration projects across the country. Projects, such as Hazelwood, County Sligo, where we are restoring an alluvial forest habitat, and in Rossacroo, County Kerry, where we are restoring roosting sites to support the lesser horseshoe bat, are good examples of the work that is under way. There are wonderful areas of biodiversity across our forest estate, and our strategic vision aims not only to enhance and restore these areas, but also to create new habitats in the long term through further diversification of our estate.

In terms of the benefits of forests for people, we were delighted in July to have President Michael D. Higgins officially open Beyond the Trees Avondale, a unique collaboration between Coillte, Fáilte Ireland and EAK Ireland. This is a great example of our ambition to build more world-class visitor destinations for everyone to enjoy. Since it opened Beyond the Trees Avondale has been recognised as Ireland’s first age-friendly tourist destination and it is notable that the treetop walk and viewing tower visitor experience is fully accessible to all. With more than 200,000 visitors since July Beyond the Trees Avondale has proven hugely popular. Coillte is now developing plans for additional outstanding visitor destinations throughout the country.

In conclusion, since April we have engaged extensively on our new vision, including stakeholder meetings, an Oireachtas day, public attitudes survey and public consultation. Independent research conducted by RED C, which analysed feedback from both the public attitudes survey and public consultation was held in summer 2022. It was positive overall regarding our new forestry strategic vision. This is encouraging. We will continue to engage with our stakeholders as we move forward, to ensure our new vision is well understood, as we seek to deliver the multiple benefits of forestry for Ireland.