Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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151. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the planting targets per hectare for all categories in 2017 and to date in 2018 for the Forestry Programme 2014-2020; the actual number of hectares planted in 2017 and to date in 2018 for these categories; and the number of hectares planted out of each annual target set on a percentage basis, in tabular form. [41677/18]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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While overall targets are set for planting programme as a whole, only Native Woodland, Agroforestry, and Forestry for fibre have specific planting targets and they are not set for the other Grant and Premium Categories (GPC) 1 to 8 inclusive. The relevant data is provided in tabular form as requested.

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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152. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of farmers and non-farmers participating in planting schemes under the Forestry Programme 2014-2020 nationally and by county in tabular form. [41678/18]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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There is no distinction between farmers and non-farmers under the 2014-2020 Forestry Programme as the aim is to make the afforestation scheme accessible to all landowners; this allows retired farmers, sons and daughters of farmers or other relatives who might have inherited land but who have careers outside of farming to take part in the scheme, as well as other private investors.

My Department compiles a number of different afforestation statistics annually, which are made available on my Department's website. Those statistics include payments made to farmers and non-farmers. For the purposes of data collection, it should be noted that the category of "non-farmer" also includes recently retired farmers or their sons and daughters or other family members. This means that the vast bulk of premiums under the afforestation scheme are paid to and remain in rural Ireland.

The following table provides a breakdown of the number of farmers and non farmers that have planted since the start of the current Forestry Programme (2015, 2016, 2017 and up to the 8th October 2018).

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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153. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the percentage of agricultural land in each county that has been planted with forestry to date in tabular form. [41679/18]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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Forestry is one of the many land use options available to farmers and land owners and the Afforestation Grant and Premium Scheme is one of a wide range of supports provided by my Department.  In 2017, 5,536 hectares of new forestry was planted nationally.  In 2018 to date, 3,297 hectares of new land has been afforested.

My Department compiles a number of different afforestation statistics annually, which are made available on my Department's website.  The third Ireland’s National Forestry Inventory – 2017 was recently published and is available on the website.  The NFI and other published data are invaluable sources of statistical information on Ireland’s forest estate. 

The area of land afforested in each county is indicated in the following table, which is taken from the third NFI.  The area of forest is estimated to be 770,020 ha or 11% of the total land area of Ireland (NFI 2017).

It is not possible to provide the percentage of agricultural land afforested in each county as there is no information available on the total agricultural area in each county.