Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

A report was done by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine approximately two years ago which suggested, astonishingly, that Ireland’s forest estate was a net carbon emitter. That was a shocking fact. Why might that be? It was because people who were interested in profit, rather than addressing climate change, biodiversity or, for that matter, supporting rural communities or farmers to engage in sustainable forestry, just grew plantations of Sitka spruce trees and cut them down too young for the market, that is, for profit. We then get a blight on the landscape and forests which do not contribute to climate action but are an actual obstruction to the sort of sustainable diverse forestry we need for climate action and biodiversity.

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