Vincent P Martin (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate and commend the Minister of State on the recent €1.3 billion investment in forestry. That will represent the largest ever investment by an Irish Government in tree-planting and is indicative of how seriously the Minister of State is taking this matter.

In the 1600s there was 10% timber coverage in Ireland. In the following 300 years, our country was asset-stripped and that coverage went down to 1%. In 1923, the State began a process of afforestation, and in those 100 years Ireland has returned to around 10% timber coverage. Ireland does not have a sawmill culture of building in timber for houses, unlike the Japanese, the northern Europeans, the Americans and the Australians, who have all built with timber for a long time. Buildings in some of those countries are over 1,000 years old. Timber lasts if one minds it. Ireland does not have a culture of building with timber. That may arise from the Great Fire of London in 1666. Soon thereafter, about two years later, a law was brought into Ireland whereby one was not allowed to use timber.

All has completely changed now, however. In the past 20 years modern technology has brought us various types of timber products, including cross-laminated timber, CLT. Huge amounts of research have been done in the west of Ireland by engineer Annette Harte on our timber, especially our Sitka spruce. Our Sitka spruce is akin to the high-producing Friesian cow because we can grow it quickly and it is a big producer. We can grow a lot of it. Our timber grows at twice the speed of that of the Scandinavian countries. It is slightly softer so has a different grade, but we can still use it to build buildings. We export most of it to the UK and it is used to build houses there. CLT allows higher rise buildings to be built more safely. An Irish timber frame company, Cygnum, has won the Stirling award for buildings built in the UK. The first passive house standard school building constructed in the UK was built and designed in Ireland, with Cygnum being to the fore of that.

That raises the question as to why Ireland is not doing this. In Ireland there appears to be a knowledge vacuum, and the builders, architects and teachers are generally not used to designing or building with timber in the main, apart from, of course, roofs and floors, so there is a knowledge deficit. There are challenges with dampness in Ireland, so one would have to detail the buildings so they are ventilated. There are fire issues, which are a legacy of hundreds of years ago. These challenges have been overcome around the rest of Europe but in Ireland they are quite problematic. We need to change our fire regulations to allow us to build in timber.

We also need to implement embodied carbon measurements and targets because our building and construction industry produces about 14% of all carbon emissions. Ireland needs to reduce that by bringing in embodied carbon emissions measurements and targets, which will encourage people to use timber.

When one builds in timber most of it is built off-site and brought onto site. The process when it is off-site is in a clean environment. Typically, 100% of the material is used, so there is no waste or minimal waste because the timber is precision-cut in a factory. Most of it is assembled in the factory and, because it is done off-site, there is less use of large cranes. That can save in site costs. Overall, therefore, it is a cleaner, more precise way of building. There are companies in Ireland doing this today, bringing in timber. This is coming and we in Ireland need to embrace it. We need to change not only the culture but also the politics.