Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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188. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the extent to which 4,000 acres of forestry of native species can contribute to carbon sequestration annually; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42558/19]

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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189. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the extent to which 4,000 acres of forestry of coniferous species can contribute to carbon sequestration annually; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42559/19]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 188 and 189 together.

The amount of carbon captured by a forest depends on a number of factors not least of which is the individual species planted as some species are more productive than others.  The management regime applied to the forest will also impact on productivity where, for example, conifer forests thinned three times will capture more carbon than a forest which has not been thinned at all. If the forest has been impacted by biotic and abiotic factors, it may struggle to grow as well as a forest that has not been subject to pest or disease outbreaks. Each individual forest is, therefore, different in terms of the amount of carbon it can capture and only ground verification of a mature forest can give an accurate figure of carbon capture.

The most recent National Forest Inventory estimates that Ireland's forests have removed (sequestered) on average 3.8 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year (approximately 5 tonnes of CO2 per hectare per year) from the atmosphere over the period 2007 to 2016 based on a total national forest estate of 770,020 ha.  This is an average figure and takes into account all different types of tree species and ages growing on a range of different soil types.

In addition, the rate of sequestration changes over time as a forest develops and matures. The Department has funded a number of large scale research projects which have examined carbon stocks and stock changes in Irish forests. For example, the carbon stocks in a Sitka spruce forest and an ash forest at different ages have been measured and are available in published journal articles. This work found that, after forty-seven years, an ash forest has 177.8 and Sitka spruce forest 376.7 tonnes of carbon per hectare. However, these figures are specific to the forests and soils examined and should not be used to reflect all forests of these species.