Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 25 January 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Forestry Policy and Strategy: Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Photo of Tim LombardTim Lombard (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister and the Minister of State. An awful lot has been discussed.

Can I get a sense of the Minister's thoughts about the programme he has announced? There are some quite amazing figures in the Minister's opening statement. The Minister is saying that a national target of 450,000 ha of new forests by 2050 is proposed. That is a significant figure. The Minister is proposing to plant an area amounting to Louth twice over, or half of County Cork, by 2050. Taking into consideration the pressures of land, the banding of cows, the nitrates action plan and all the other significant issues we have in the agricultural sector, to think that we will plant Louth twice over in that period raises the question of whether the Minister thinks we can reach that massive target.

I acknowledge the statement the Minister made which went into the financial element. It was a powerful statement acknowledging what the financial element is. As the Minister will be aware, however, farmers look at this in many ways. The financial element is one element but there is an attachment to the land that is something special within the Irish people as well. Would the Minister have confidence that by 2050 this programme will deliver the planting of an area the size of Louth twice over?