Timber-planting will fall far behind Government targets this year, threatening a fresh crisis in Irish forestry, industry groups warn.
Farmers and forestry businesses predict the Republic will plant just 2,000 hectares of new timber this year, well behind the Government’s target of 8,000 hectares.
Forest Industries Ireland (FII), the Irish Timber Growers’ Association (ITGA) and the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) joined forces on Tuesday to call on the Government to cut red tape and boost grants to accelerate new tree-planting.
Forestry accounted for just €90 million of €2 billion in aid given to farmers in 2019, said Brendan Lacey, chairman of the ITGA.
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He argued that the Government must tackle this “imbalance” in support to reflect the likely benefits of forestry.
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“Only through such rebalancing of supports will Ireland achieve its ambitious climate action targets,” Mr Lacey said.
Current regulations do not support large-scale planting and forest management, said Jason Fleming, IFA farm forestry chairman.
Mark McAuley, FII director, called for a “major injection of money” to aid the national forestry programme.
He pointed out that the Republic had a great natural timber resource.
“We grow our construction softwood faster than anywhere else,” he said. “But if we stop planting trees, we won’t have any timber to build our houses in 25 years’ time.”
He added that forestry rewarded farmers while locking away carbon and aiding the fight against climate change.
Farmers planted just 360 hectares of new timber last year, even though there are 23,000 private forest owners in the State.
Licensing chaos that created a two-year backlog of permits and “ageing forestry schemes” undermined farmers’ confidence in the business, the groups said.
The Department of Agriculture, responsible for issuing licences needed to cut or plant trees and build forest roads to transport timber, allocated extra resources to tackle the hold ups. However, the three industry bodies say Government must take other steps also.
They argue that current payments are not enough to make it attractive for farmers to allocate large areas of land to forestry.
The State’s 2023-2027 forestry schemes are too complex and should be simplified and improved, the organisations say.
They also argue that providing cash rewards for boosting biodiversity, providing habitats and sequestering carbon will add to the incentives to plant trees.
