Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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236. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his target for land availability for afforestation by county; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3165/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Afforestation targets are set out in the forestry programme launched last year. The aim of this new programme is to plant almost 44,000ha of new forests over the period 2015-2020. The scheme itself has undergone significant changes from the scheme which operated under the previous programme. These changes which include for example an increase in the annual premium rate by 20% across the board are designed to encourage more landowners to convert their land from agriculture to forestry. In terms of setting afforestation targets by county my Department has avoided doing this as the scheme is demand led and therefore it would be difficult to determine future planting levels at county level.