Donal Hickey: Forestry re-think badly needed — could a €20k forestry scholarship help?
Coillte launches its 2025 Forestry Scholarship Programme, offering up to €20,000 per recipient, along with paid summer placements and career opportunities. Pictured here are inaugural scholars Áine O'Dwyer (Donegal), Mia Sibbald (Kildare), and Alex Power (Waterford), with managing director, Coillte Forest, Mark Carlin. Applications are open until May 2, 2025 and the award will be made in Autumn 2025
Widespread, recent storm damage caused by falling trees has prompted a badly-needed rethink on forestry in Ireland.
Michael Healy-Rae, new junior minister for agriculture with special responsibility for forestry, certainly has plenty to be getting on with. He will be working with a task force made up of various interests involved in the area.
Apart from enforcing stricter regulations governing the distance trees may be planted away from powerlines, there are many other issues to be looked at — the extent of afforestation and where it is allowed, Government grants, and species of trees to be chosen, for instance.
The Coillte Forestry Scholarship will award a number of students attending the eligible courses either University College Dublin (UCD) or South East Technological University (SETU) up to €20,000 for the duration of their degree programme (€5,000 per year) to support with fees and living expenses.
The Scholarship is open to Leaving Certificate students and mature students who are planning to attend one of the eligible forestry undergraduate courses at UCD or SETU.
Applications are open until May 2,2025 and the award will be made in Autumn 2025.
Mind you, Ireland is under-forested compared to other EU countries. Here, 11.6% of the land area is planted whereas it is 35% in parts of Europe.
For many years, people have been calling for the planting of more native, broadleaf trees. At present, 61.2% of our forestry consists of non-native conifers, such as fast-growing sitka spruce, with the remainder comprising broadleaf trees like oak, beech and ash.
Some parts of the country are grossly over-planted, with northern Duhallow, in County Cork, and County Leitrim, which has the country’s highest percentage (20%) of cover, being examples.
The annual grant system is designed with relatively short-term tree harvesting in mind. Payments last 15 to 20 years, which is of no use to landowners wishing to plant mixed species, and native broadleaf that can take up to 100 years to mature. Why bother, after all, when there’s no return after 20 years!
Clearly, grants offer a greater incentive to plant non-native species which, when harvested, can disturb wildlife, release carbon, damage water quality, and leave the landscape looking scared, as Martha O’Hagen Luff, associate professor, TCD Business School, points out.
Writing in , she goes on: “The Irish government currently provides subsidies for the beef and dairy sector, which for most farmers would not be financially viable without support. The sector produces large amounts of greenhouse gases and around 90% of the produce is exported."
“Rather than supporting polluting types of agricultural activity, we propose that forestry is subsidised to a level that reflects its value as a public good, which will also reduce the likelihood of EU fines for Ireland failing to meet its emissions targets. For landowners to be asked to put agricultural land permanently out of use and to establish long-term native woodlands, they need to be properly incentivised and financially rewarded to do so."
Forests once covered 80% of Ireland’s land surface. Large-scale cutting back took place in the 16th and early 17th centuries, as wood was needed for shipbuilding and charcoal, not forgetting clearance for farming purposes.
