Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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5. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he has considered continuous cover as an alternative, in view of the afforestation his Department has planned; and if he has carried out a review of the potential for higher value output derived from continuous cover. [21383/17]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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We are at a point of real change in the forestry industry. There was a massive increase in afforestation to meet our climate change targets. We need to learn from what has happened in the past 50 years and move to what I believe is a form of forestry with a higher value, with a higher value product, with far more jobs and where we protect biodiversity and the long-term quality of soil. It should be in the form of continuous cover forestry as in Germany, Switzerland and many other countries. Does the Minister of State have such a plan? Will he implement a plan to move from clear felling to continuous cover forestry? If so, how will it be done?

Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. Continuous cover forestry, CCF, is a silvicultural system option in which the aim is to keep the overall forest canopy in place continuously, with low levels of soil exposure and any regeneration gap confined to about one third of a hectare in area. Sites suited to CCF are those where the crop is conducive to seeding, thereby facilitating natural regeneration, and where the risk of windblow is moderate to low following the felling of small regeneration areas or coupes. This silvicultural system is not so much an alternative to afforestation, as the forest must generally be planted in the first instance; instead on suitable sites it may be an option for forest owners where income can be generated from successive thinning operations as an alternative to clearfelling at the end of a rotation.

In the Department's forestry programme, 2014 to 2020, continuous cover forestry is encouraged for new and existing native woodlands under both the afforestation and native woodlands conservation scheme. CCF principles and close to nature silvicultural techniques must also be applied to forests funded under the new agriforestry planting category. Supporting actions for CCF are also included in the targeted training submeasure of the forestry programme. My Department has supported research on CCF under COFORD's low impact silvicultural systems project from 2009 to 2014 and also in the more recent translation from French into English of the guidelines on continuous cover forestry which I will launch tomorrow at the Irish Forestry, Woodland and Bioenergy show at Stradbally Hall Estate, County Laois. I also launched Broadleaf Forestry in Irelandat Avondale in October last year. This COFORD publication provides extensive guidance on the use of silvicultural systems based on natural regeneration and continuous cover forestry. It took approximately 15 years to get the book ready.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House.

Furthermore, as part of the Department’s mid-term review of its forestry programme submissions have been called for to examine the possibilities to support forest owners in transitioning to continuous cover forestry under the woodland improvement scheme.

With regard to a review of potential higher value outputs from CCF, they would include continuity of income from ongoing thinning operations as opposed to the lump sum at clearfell stage, with a consequent replanting cost. Non-wood benefits include the potential for greater forest resilience and habitat diversity. Under the COFORD's low impact silvicultural systems project mentioned, an economic study of CCF was carried out. The study examined factors affecting economic returns from CCF compared with a clearfelling system. The work will help to inform forest owners on the decision to move to a CCF system. Also funded under the COFORD project was the establishment of six research plots throughout Ireland, with five in Coillte forests and one in a private forest. The purpose is to have demonstration and research areas in different woodland types in Ireland so as to be able to demonstrate the timber and non-timber outputs over time. All management inputs which are time and expense and outputs which are timber volumes and revenues are being recorded. As data are collected from sites, knowledge of the application of CCF systems can be improved.

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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I am glad that our timing is good in advance of the event to be held in Stradbally tomorrow. I wish the Minister of State the best of luck in that regard. What I hear is recognition of the fact that continuous cover forestry has a real role to play but in marginal conservative research on native forestry; however, not necessarily on the scale in respect of which I believe there is potential. This is a moment of real change. We should surely have learned in the past 30 or 40 years that much of the forestry we had planted - it is nothing against the people involved - was on the wrong land and in the wrong location. Minimum services were provided. Effectively, we were foresting to receive grants rather than thinking long-term, which is what one must do in forestry. At a time when the level of afforestation must jump, we need to change. It is important that the Government give a clear sense that the mainstay approach will be towards continuous cover forestry and that the entire support system will work to that end. When we look at such continuous cover forests in Germany or Switzerland - I have seen examples in Ireland where Sitka spruce forests have been planted in this way - they end up with an incredibly vibrant and valuable forest where the value of the output is ten times what we are getting from lower grade fast growth wood. Will the Minister of State make the big strategic leap tomorrow and state we will go with this scale rather than just a research project?

Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The afforestation programme comes with an obligation to replant.

4 o’clock

One of the issues in regard to that scheme has been to make sure we maximise the value of the State's investment in afforestation in the first place, by optimising both the monetary and environmental value from the crop that has been established.

The Deputy is right in that it is necessary to do research and trialling. There are sites that will be supported as part of ongoing research. There are disadvantages from the perspective of the whole economic prospect of the industry if one is going to develop a whole forest sector at national level. Some 12,000 jobs are supported by the industry. We have some significant investment from the processors. The size of the product that comes out of a continuous cover forest is not attractive to them. It is not something they can use significantly. It has a place, but I do not think it is it going to replace the existing afforestation programme. People would not have seen any role for agroforestry a few years ago. Native woodlands schemes were on somebody's wish list, but now they have come to be. We have to look at it as part of the overall afforestation landscape, but not as an either-or.

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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We have to look to the long term. The Minister, Deputy Denis Naughten, has opposed my view of economics in his climate paper. I fundamentally challenge his economics and one of the ways in which I would challenge it is that we are not thinking long term. If we go the direction the Minister of State is suggesting, where this is just a minor research project and a couple of sites will do and where we are going to massively increase our afforestation, then we are committing for the next 40 years to another whole round of clear-felling, where we are just taking land, pumping up the forest as best we can, clear-felling it and starting again. We will end up with soil degradation and it will have an effect on our water supply. It is not a viable long-term project.

One has to think long-term in forestry. It is right for us to think long-term now and say we will think of the world in 30 or 40 years' time. The Minister of State said people involved in the lumber industry do not like the forest project because it is too big and not easy to do for the low-cost forestry outputs they are currently processing. Think differently and of what we are going to be looking for in 30 or 40 years' time. We will be using wood in a completely different way. It will be a highly valuable. It is right for us to plant now with a view to what the world will be like in 2060, 2070, 2080 and 2090. That is the economic vision we have to come to if we are going to manage climate change. It has to be a long-term vision, not a short-term business as usual approach, which is what we are going to do in forestry and is not the right business approach.

Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy can take a very narrow-minded outlook on this. C16 is the structural grade standard that is needed for the construction sector. That is structural timber, which is renewable and an alternative to concrete and steel. New, advanced cross-lamination and other technologies are being developed to strengthen such structures so buildings of a higher height and with greater load-bearing can be constructed from timber. There is the forest floor, with the brash and everything else, being used in biomass. There is a renewable source. It is like saying a cow produces milk everyday. She also produces calves and, at the end of her time, she produces some leather. It is renewable, and there is a commercial aspect to it. That is not a sin.

It is part and parcel of any system we try to make. We are going to use 2.7 megatonnes in land-use options as part of the EU Effort Sharing Decision with regard to our carbon mitigation. That is a percentage of what our 2005 emissions were on new plantations. I think 3.5 million or 4.5 million tonnes of carbon a year can be sequestered and stored in our post-1990 plantations. There is much going on there, and continuous cover forestry is part of it, but it is not at the expense of it either. We are trying to get 18% and we want another 45,000 ha in the next five years.