Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The Department of Agricuture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has been involved in and has funded research in breeding ash trees for resistance for almost ten years.

Teagasc is leading the research in Ireland on improving the genetic tolerance of ash to the ash dieback disease, which is carried out with research funding support from the Department and in collaboration with Coillte, Irish universities and Research Performing Organisations, European partners, including in the UK.

A small proportion of ash trees show natural tolerance to the disease and this tolerance is heritable.

Production of disease tolerant ash plants is in a research and development stage in Ireland. It will be some years before ash plants tolerant to ash dieback will be in full production and available for planting.

Tree breeding is a long-term process, and material considered for potential use in long-term programmes must be validated using laboratory methods along with multi-site field testing.

The focus of the research to date has been on the identification and establishment of a population of tolerant ash plants, and to test its suitability for adaptation in Irish growing conditions.

It has been the case, as part of this research effort, that material initially considered to be tolerant to ash dieback disease has subsequently succumbed to the disease during field testing.

The primary output of this work to date has been the establishment of three gene banks of tolerant ash material and an indoor seed-orchard of tolerant trees.

The purpose of the indoor seed orchard is to produce seed for the next population of ash plants for further disease tolerance assessments. The next step will be the establishment of an outdoor seed orchard, using tolerant plants identified from this disease tolerance assessment.

Seed from this outdoor seed orchard will be used to supply ash plants at scale.

The COFORD Council Forest Genetic Resources Working Group published a COFORD Connects information note in 2020 that outlined a timescale of at least 6 but up to 20 years for mass production of tolerant trees