Ireland’s current forestry policy is based on a discredited 1996 plan requiring ‘critical mass’ by planting 20,000 hectares a year of fast growing conifers, environmentalists have claimed. Over recent years planting has fallen to 6,000 hectares a year.
‘The Department of Agriculture has done nothing to provide a new plan except hire consultants to tell them the policy has failed’, said a spokesman for Friends of the Irish Environment.
‘The poor quality timber coming out of Irish forests is unsustainable and farmers are being led down the garden path’, the spokesman added.
The group claims that the recent River Basin Management Plan for the Eastern area says that €4 million will now be required to reduce the impact from forestry in the area, €2 million for Glendalough alone. ‘The European Commission discontinued 75% grant aid for Ireland’s policy because of environmental concerns in 2006’, a spokesman pointed out.
‘Tax payers pay twice for the wrong tree in the wrong place – grant aided forestry on sensitive soils, paid for by the taxpayer, is polluting waters with sediments, dissolved organic carbon and nutrients. This water then has to be cleaned up at the cost of the tax payer before it can be used.’
‘Ireland desperately needs a forestry policy to address all the pressing issue we and the ITGA are raising’.
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