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

As I mentioned, this arrangement will account for roughly 1.5% of new forests developed between now and 2050.

The mainstay of the forestry programme is going to be Irish farmers and we are encouraging them to plant at least some of their land. The new forestry programme has been designed to incentivise farmers to the greatest extent possible, as I mentioned earlier. Under the new programme, farmers will receive 20 years of premium payments compared with 15 years for non-farmers. They will receive 33% more premium payments and farmers who want to plant new forests will receive the single farm payment on land that they convert to forestry. Private landowners will not receive that payment. As much of the income that farmers derive from forestry will be tax free, it is a very beneficial scheme in that regard.

I reiterate that Coillte will not be selling any existing publicly-owned forests to the fund and nor will it seek to purchase any other publicly-owned land on behalf of the fund. This is land that is already in private ownership that will be bought by a fund which has State involvement in the form of the ISIF.

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