Pippa Hackett (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I do not have to hand what collaborations are ongoing but I am sure that we wholly engage with international research, particularly within forestry. The Deputy will be aware that we have a challenge now that our forestry estate will become no longer a sink of carbon and that is one of the challenges we face going forward, which is in order to ramp up the planting of trees now in the next number of years, we need to offset that. The science is not entirely clear and continually moves with regard to, for example, the planting of peaty soils and the effects of farming on peaty soils. That continues to move around but we are very confident that what we intend to do around supporting people to plant trees and supporting farmers to plant more hedgerows and indeed supporting public bodies to engage in tree planting will help us to deal with the many challenges which lie ahead.

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