Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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169. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if his Department has examined the potential for strategic afforestation to maximise carbon sequestration; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18321/18]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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The National Mitigation Plan (July 2017) states that “...the forest sector, through afforestation and the use of forest-based biomass and wood products offers considerable scope for climate change mitigation, equivalent to 20-22% of agricultural emissions.” In this context afforestation is a key land use strategy for my Department supported through the €0.5billion Forestry Programme 2014 – 2020. The afforestation scheme itself is voluntary and operates at a national level rather than targeting certain counties or regions. Therefore, in terms of maximising the potential of forestry to sequester carbon this very much depends on the willingness of landowners to participate in the scheme.

Strategic afforestation operates at scheme level where the programme aims to encourage landowners to consider planting trees on their farms. Agro forestry for example allows for forestry and grazing on the same land at the same while the forestry for fibre planting category can be clearfelled after 15 years and not 35-40 which is the case for more traditional forestry. So far over 18,000 hectares of new forests have been established during the first three years of the programme. The midterm review of this plan, completed in February 2018, improved the rates available for all planting categories.

Central to my Department’s approach to increasing forest cover is the promotion of “Farm Forestry” where farmers are encouraged to include afforestation as part of their overall farming mix. Land which is underutilised and perhaps more difficult to work on could be planted with trees, while moving livestock onto the dryer and more productive fields. In this way a new income is created while maintaining overall herd size.

In December 2016 Minister Doyle announced funding of over €1.3m for developing the “Irish Land Use Emission and Sequestration Support Tool”. This project will develop modelling capacity to examine future scenarios for agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration by forestry in Ireland. Other projects recently funded by my Department include research on biomass and renewable energy from Short Rotation Forestry which explores the potential of short rotation forestry (SRF) to contribute to biomass production and renewable energy targets in Ireland.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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170. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if consideration will be given to planting species of trees with a high carbon sequestration capacity in view of the fact that some species can absorb up to four times the amount of carbon that others can; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18322/18]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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My Department’s policy is to increase species diversity within the national forest estate; to this end increasing afforestation levels across all planting categories is supported with higher rates reserved for broadleaf species. Under the current forestry programme new species have been added to the mix to create more diversity and to target climate change mitigation. Under the forestry for fibre scheme, eucalyptus and poplar have been introduced. These species have a much shorter rotation than traditional forestry where clearfell can take place after 15 years as opposed to between 35 and 40 for more traditional forestry. As a renewable energy source material wood can help to displace fossil fuels as a source of heating in local markets and can help meet demand created by the recently launched SSRH scheme.  

As one of our fastest growing tree species, Sitka spruce has an important role to play in carbon sequestration. It grows well in Ireland because it is suited to our soils and climate. It has been grown successfully for over 80 years and it has proven itself to be one of the most productive coniferous species grown in Ireland and as such has become the industry’s mainstay in terms of timber processing and end markets. My Department’s recent publication “Forest Statistics – Ireland 2017” states that Sitka spruce is the most common species, occupying 52.4% of the forest area. There are twelve different planting categories within the Department’s afforestation scheme and the most popular, known as GPC 3 is made up of Sitka spruce planted with a second species. In fact almost 80% of total planting in 2017 was GPC 3.

A typical productive plantation of Sitka spruce will result in removals of 10 tonnes of CO2e per annum per hectare on average over a full rotation. In some individual years this figure may fluctuate. It is therefore important to look at changes in carbon across the whole forest estate, which was a sink of -3.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2015.