Malcolm Noonan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome Teresa to the Chamber.

I welcome the Minister of State to this important debate. I never had the formal opportunity to wish him the best in his tenure as Minister of State. I know he will hit the ground running. Any time I have had the duty to call him on issues, he picked up the phone straight away and dealt with the issue. I do appreciate that. I know he has a busy portfolio.

I am going to raise a couple of points and questions. A number of Members mentioned peat slides. One of the first tasks I had as Minister of State was to travel to Drumkeeran in County Leitrim in 2020 when the bog slide took place at Shass Mountain. Watching 25-year-old Sitka spruce, which look like Christmas trees, sliding down the mountain showed me we had really a serious problem with forestry in Ireland. We saw trees of that age that had no number-value whatsoever sliding down the mountain in a bog slide event. It stressed the urgent need to reform our forestry policy.My colleague and former Member of this House, Pippa Hackett went a long way with the forestry strategy and I hope the Minister of State will continue that trajectory. It shows the scale of the challenges we had. The really significant challenge is that a very limited amount of land in this country is suitable for commercial forestry. That is something that is being borne out in the land use review.

Between storms Darragh and Éowyn we lost 26,000 ha of forestry that was flattened. Of that, 14,500 ha was on Coillte estate and 11,500 ha was private. I welcome the Minister of State's commitment to the windblown forestry reconstitution scheme and to looking at the markets for windblown timber.

Looking at the report of the Climate Change Advisory Council, I ask that we get certainty on the LULUCF targets as they relate to windblown timber. Are they going to be credited to Ireland? I understand we are going to fall short on targets in many sectors. Perhaps LULUCF may come very close to meeting our targets under existing strategies. Is the LULUCF target for windblown timber going to be accounted for positively in terms of our sectoral emissions? I do not expect the Minister of State to answer that today but it is important because it could be an added benefit to the State from what was an awful national tragedy.

I welcome the Minister of State's commitment to agroforestry It is an important sector and perhaps even more so as we look towards reductions in the herd. There are opportunities there for landowners. I welcome the new MSc programme in agroforestry set up by the National Organic Training Skillnet. There is huge potential in this area. I welcome the Minister of State's comments on this in his opening remarks. There is potential around collective land use practices, combining trees with crops and animals. That could deliver significant ecological and economic interactions between trees and agricultural components as well as co-benefits to climate, nature and water. I welcome the Minister of State's commitment in that regard.

The potential that exists to expand our native woodlands for delivering co-benefits in terms of flood mitigation, climate and nature, and water quality is critically important. Those schemes could be of huge benefit not only to the country but also to landowners who have pockets of native woodland on their land who could look at expanding those over the next number of years.

I have raised on a number of occasions in the House Coillte's regrettable decision to abolish or get rid of its not-for-profit division, Coillte Nature. I have read numerous reports, most recently the Coillte Forest Estate Strategic Land Use Plan 2023 to 2050, in which Coillte Nature is given a specific role in nature restoration in its work, the Dublin Mountains makeover being an example. We are embarking on a nature restoration plan, so why was this decision made? The senior Minister, Deputy Heydon, basically said there was nothing to see here, that Coillte would embed its work on biodiversity into its main strategic operations. I do not see how that is possible. Coillte Nature was doing very valuable work. It won an award in the RDS a few weeks ago for its work. It is a regressive decision by Coillte. I ask the Minister of State to take that up with Coillte in future meetings. Some of the work the National Parks and Wildlife Service has done, such as on hen harrier welfare, co-management of sites, looking at co-designing and redesigning sites for nature, and removing forest in areas where there is a nature benefit, is something that could still be developed but it needed that dedicated Coillte Nature division to carry out that work. I ask the Minister of State to give consideration to that. The issue of biosecurity was referred to by a number of Members. I stress the importance of local nurseries for indigenous planting of native trees and native stock. I did some contracting work for Coillte many years ago, harvesting native tree seeds, from ash, spindle and other species, around the country. It was most enjoyable going out in the autumn to harvest seeds and bringing them to Coillte to have them brought on. Part of our solution in biosecurity should involve our indigenous stock and local provenance. That is something we should look at in ash dieback and some of the research being done, particularly in the UK, where they are leaving standing ash trees in local areas to see if there is a resilience to ash dieback. We should give consideration to this here. It is our native tree and it is hugely valuable from a cultural and biodiversity perspective. Those of us from hurling counties appreciate its value more than anyone. We should look more towards research. I think there is hope for ash trees. We should put more into research to try to manage the problem.

Regarding the point that was made about cutting down roadside trees, it should be about resourcing local authorities to better manage roadside trees. That could be about doing assessments about pruning and reducing them rather than removing them completely. I see widespread removal of trees from the countryside. I mention this in terms of research on fire blight as well.

I welcome the work that is being done. I urge the Minister of State to visit the fantastic team at Hometree, who have done fantastic work on local nurseries and growing native stock. Marina Conway from Enniscrone in Sligo is doing fantastic work in championing agroforestry as well. If the Minister of State gets an opportunity to visit Hometree, he will see the innovative work being done there. I know he is very active and is great for visiting places, but he should, during his tenure, visit them. I wish him all the very best in his tenure.