Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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698. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the work undertaken by his Department since 27 June 2020 to ensure that Coillte’s remit supports the delivery of climate change commitments and the protection of biodiversity; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9726/23]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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Coillte is a private limited company established under the Forestry Act 1988 and is operationally independent from the Minister and Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

It is Government policy that Coillte, as the State forestry company, should play its part in addressing climate change and biodiversity challenges and they have responded to this in their new Forestry Vision and Strategy. This new vision aims to deliver multiple benefits from its forests and bring more focus to climate action, setting ambitious new targets on biodiversity and recreation, while continuing to deliver for the forest and wood products industry.

Coillte has indicated that their afforestation ambition is to enable the creation of new forests providing a carbon sink of 18m tonnes of CO2. Coillte will also manage its existing forest estate to capture an additional 10m tonnes of CO2 by 2050. They intend to increase the area of its forest estate being managed primarily for nature from 20% to 50% in the long term, by enhancing and restoring biodiversity and planting new forests, half of which will be native woodlands

Coillte met with my Department a number of times, dating back to 2021, during the development of their new Forestry Strategic Vision. A Shareholder Letter of Expectation issued from the shareholding Ministers to Coillte on 2nd June 2022 which included a direction to the Company as follows “In response to the climate and biodiversity crises, Coillte will seek to balance its commercial obligations under the Forestry Act 1988 with the delivery of the multiple benefits of forestry for society including increased afforestation and recreation provision and through contributing to Ireland’s emission reduction targets under the Climate Action Plan 2021.”