Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue, which I acknowledge is causing a lot of concern at the moment. We should not lose sight of the objective. The objective is to increase dramatically the amount of trees on our island and the amount of our land that is under forestry. We want an increase from about 11% of our land being forestry to something more like 18%, and that means planting millions of trees. We need trees for all sorts of different reasons. We need trees for timber, which includes spruce and conifer trees that are suitable for timber, so that we can build houses to help us with the housing crisis. We need other types of trees too, such as native woodland, for example, for climate action, biodiversity and leisure. It is intended to have a different mix of types of plantations for exactly that reason, namely, that we need trees for lots of different reasons. We need timber for desperately-needed homes, as well as trees for biodiversity and for leisure. All new Coillte forests will be open to the public.

We believe farmers will be the primary drivers of our afforestation programme, as well as being the primary beneficiaries of what is an ambitious forestry programme worth €1.3 billion. Farmers are Ireland's main landowners and will have the opportunity to play the most important and significant role in the creation of new forests. We have designed a new forestry programme to be as attractive to farmers as possible, with farmers receiving 33% more premium payments than other landowners under the new forestry programme, in addition to the single farm payment which other landowners will not receive. In many cases, the income farmers will derive from forestry will be tax-free. It is a very attractive offering and we are encouraging farmers to take up forestry on at least part of their land.

Regarding the Irish Strategic Forestry Fund, which the Deputy mentioned, there has been some misinformation regarding it. First of all, no public land will be privatised. The land that will be bought is already in private ownership. Most of it is already under forest and some bare land will be purchased and afforested. The Government is part of the fund. The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, the Government's sovereign welfare fund, is a minority investor in this fund, alongside the UK fund. Land that is now entirely in private ownership will be brought, at least in part, into public ownership, albeit through a minority shareholding in that fund. The total amount of forestry we are talking about is roughly 1% of all new forest that we intend to develop between now and 2050.

I want to be clear on this. Contracts have been signed. This was not approved by Government but contracts have been signed on it. To be clear, this is not our intended or preferred main model for increasing the number of forests in Ireland. Primarily, we want Irish farmers taking up the forestry programme and schemes that are now available. That will be the mainstay of our forest programme, not arrangements such as this.

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