Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I grew up in a rural area. It is unbelievable that we do not have even a rough estimation of the extent of our hedgerow cover, although 600,000 km has been suggested. Hedgerows could potentially sequester between one tenth and half of a megatonne of CO2, which could make a very significant contribution towards our overall mitigation figures in respect of agriculture in general. We have not thrown that figure into the equation when discussing the matter in Europe and so forth. Is it not important for us to get the right figures so that we know the extent of the country's hedgerow cover?

Clearly we should have very ambitious targets in forestry and in building up the number of urban trees. I understand London has a target of planting 1 million trees in the next couple of years. All our urban areas, including Dublin, Cork and Waterford, should have similar targets to help the national effort and to mitigate carbon in the general area of agriculture.

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