Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Matthews. I welcome the opportunity to address the House on Ireland's new forestry strategy. I commend my colleague the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, on her Trojan work in securing an unprecedented €1.3 billion to execute this key pillar of Ireland's climate action plan over the next five years and the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, on his leadership in this role. As the Taoiseach told the IFA last week, the forestry strategy was designed to benefit rural Ireland by giving farmers the biggest opportunity to meet our forestry targets and ensuring the overwhelming majority of the economic stimulus it provides will be felt in rural Ireland. As a rural Deputy representing a constituency with a proud agricultural tradition, it is especially important to me that farmers are at the heart of Ireland's response to the climate and biodiversity challenge. They own and manage two thirds of our land, so it is our responsibility as politicians to ensure they are empowered and equipped to lead. There are also benefits in the forestry strategy for nature, and I welcome the provisions to expand substantially the native woodland cover, ensure more diverse mixes of species, address legacy impacts, restore afforested peatlands and support closer to nature forest management.

We have work to do across government to ensure robust ecological assessment procedures to safeguard habitats and species of ecological importance such as the freshwater pearl mussel, marsh fritillary butterfly, red listed bird species, species-rich semi-natural grasslands and other high nature-value farmland areas, especially with respect to the native tree area scheme. This is at the forefront of the Minister of State, Senator Hackett's, mind. When we think of forests, what do we think of? Is it stands of healthy conifers that will be felled for valuable sawlog to support the rural economy and national housing targets, beautiful non-native beech and bluebell woodlands that were established centuries ago on old estates that we now enjoy for walks with our families, or the soggy biodiversity-rich temperate rainforests dripping in mosses and liverworts that might naturally occur on large swathes of our island? I argue we should think of all three. We should not forget about the other forests either, the islands of low yield class timber on peat soils on the western seaboard, many of which are uneconomic to extract, the ancient and long-established woodlands that are dying in slow motion, choked by invasive rhododendron and laurel that crowd out the next generations of trees, the dense monocultures of conifers that exclude both light and communities, and the bare hillsides that might regenerate on their own through a succession of grasses, bushes and shrubs to natural woodland were they not relentlessly grazed.

Social and economic policies of the past, which were undertaken for good and valid reasons at the time, left us a difficult legacy when it comes to forestry. The decision to ensure the nation's strategic timber resource never competed with agriculture and confined forests to the productively poorer lands was made in the shadows of the Great Hunger. The planting efforts on vast peatlands and of the west in the 1970s and 1980s provided desperately needed rural employment for so many people and was the only alternative to emigration. The intensification of agriculture that overwhelmed the wooded corners of fields and tall thick hedgerows transformed the fortunes of many farmers, and the planting and felling protocols of more recent decades pursued maximum economic productivity in the regions left behind, often to the detriment of environmental or social productivity.

The forestry of the future must take account of this history and we, as elected representatives, must ensure the whole story is told if we are to make better decisions today. In my role as Minister of State with responsibility for heritage, I am keenly aware that the Ireland of today has a very different set of values to the Ireland that wrote the first 100 years of our forestry story. These new values are very much to the fore in my Department which undertakes extensive work to conserve and restore existing native woodlands, create new ones and restructure and rehabilitate the forests where a different habitat is better for nature.

In our national parks and nature reserves from Glengarriff to Glenveagh, we are restoring ancient oak yew and alluvial woodlands, planting new native woodlands, collecting seeds and establishing conservation populations of genetically unique tree species, removing invasive species such as rhododendron, cherry laurel, beech and sycamore restoring and rehabilitating afforested peatlands, erecting deer fencing and managing populations on an ongoing basis. This work has been significantly ramped up thanks to the increased funding provision for the National Parks and Wildlife Service under this Government.

We are also taking a longer term more strategic view of the management of these special places. In Glenveagh National Park in County Donegal, we are implementing a new woodland management strategy with a 100-year time horizon to 2120. In Killarney National Park in County Kerry, we recently published a 30-year review of the vegetation change in permanent native woodlands, the findings of which will inform future management, including the new rhododendron management plan which is currently being finalised. In Wicklow Mountains National Park, a new deer management plan is expected to be completed later this year. At Wild Nephin National Park, we are at the beginning of a major ecological restoration project to bring a former conifer plantation back to healthy peatland, native woodland and riparian habitat where natural processes are the drivers of change. At the national level we are almost finished a scoping study to map, monitor and protect Ireland's ancient long-established native woodlands, which is a vital step towards a full national inventory of these amazing habitats.

We also continue to manage deer hunting licences, with more than 6,000 issued by my Department last year. Deer grazing remains an overwhelming pressure on the establishment and regeneration of native woodlands across many parts of the country despite the culling of more than 50,000 animals last year. I firmly believe a long-term, strategic and sustained approach to deer management that is led by data is needed. We need a deer census, a deer forum to explore management possibilities, including contracted service providers, and to promote venison as a source of wild organic lean protein and mainstream it in our diets. We also need to think more broadly about grazing in general, especially grazing by sheep. Conservation grazing has a role to play in the management of our uplands, but what we have now is not working for nature, water, climate or people and we need to rethink it.

Invasive plants such as rhododendron and cherry laurel present significant challenges and a major programme based on sound science and best practice and managed strategically on a site-specific basis needs to be undertaken. Communities can play a vital role in this work, and we have seen fantastic examples of people coming together to support nature. An inspiring one is a group of farmers who, through their participation in the rural social scheme, are removing rhododendron from Bundorragha Catchment in County Mayo, and I would like to see much more of this take place. It is clear we need to think big and take bigger action. The next five years will be crucial.

The European Commission's proposal for a new nature restoration law is focusing minds on the challenge ahead and its implications for all habitats and sectors, including woodland and forestry, and it is starting to become clear. Early analysis suggests we will need to establish approximately 1,300 ha of sessile oak woods and approximately 500 ha of alluvial forest every year to achieve the 2030 targets. This goes well beyond the scope of the new forestry strategy, and while the role of Coillte has been much discussed in this House in recent weeks, a key question remains to be asked. Is there potential for Coillte to ring-fence a portion of the profits it returns to the State for the creation of permanent native woodland in support of the nature restoration law? I would like to see this explored. Speaking in the Chamber earlier today, the Minister, Deputy Ryan, signalled his intention to look at the mandate of Coillte. Last month I wrote an op-ed piece setting out my hope that we will be able within my lifetime to remove fences that corral nature into so-called safe places. If we are to achieve or even move towards it, we need a clear sense of who and what our forests are for, where they should and should not be; and a sustained, targeted focus on how they are managed for the next 100 years.

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