TheGovernment is set to approve a €79.5 million package for farmers and landownerswhose forests have been impacted by ash dieback.

Minister forAgriculture Charlie McConalogue and Minister of State Pippa Hackett will bringthe proposal to the Cabinet this morning.

It provides a €5,000per hectare payment to farmers who clear ash sites and re-establish new forestsin their place.

This is in additionto an existing €160 million scheme that pays farmers to clear their ash forestsand replant them with a different species.

The average ashplantation is three hectares, meaning a payment of €15,000 for thoselandowners, in addition to grants covering the costs of clearing andre-establishing the site.

The scheme would alsomean a farmer with ten hectares of ash will be eligible to receive €50,000alongside these other grants covering the cost of clearing and re-establishingthe area.

Farmers who havealready cleared and re-established sites under previous ash dieback schemeswill also qualify for this €5,000 per hectare payment.

Last year, aDepartment of Agriculture, Food and the Marine report on the impact of ashdieback on growers said it should be treated as a national emergency andrecommended ex gratia payments in recognition of the lack of an effective Statescheme to manage the disease for many years.

Since then,frustration has intensified among more than 6,000 farmers and growers as theyawait news of the payments, having watched their trees wilt and die for 12years from the time the disease arrived in Ireland.

The payments, of€5,000 per hectare, would be in addition to previously announced site clearancegrants of €2,000 per hectare and up to €8,500 to reconstitute plantations.

The package set to beapproved by the Government today represents a substantial increase in paymentsto growers who have complained that previous schemes failed to cover clearancecosts or compensate for the loss of timber crops.

However,many growers want the full economic value of the trees they planted - had theyreached maturity.

They maintain thatash dieback was allowed into the country by the Government through importedtrees despite the fact the fungal disease had rapidly spread across Europe andthe UK.

The first cases ofthe fungal disease were confirmed in Ireland in October 2012 in nursery treesimported from the Netherlands.

The trees wereplanted in various parts of the country and outbreaks of ash dieback followed,initially in Co Leitrim, followed by counties Meath, Monaghan and Galway.

The disease, whichwas airborne, quickly spread to native ash trees.

Ash dieback has sincegrown around the country and is also widespread in Northern Ireland.

Most ash growers arefarmers - with the average size of plantations being three hectares.

Some forests wereestablished more than 35 years ago after the forestry service encouraged theplanting of ash trees on a commercial basis in the 1980s as demand for ashbutts for hurley-making was high.

Other schemes wereput in place by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine - such asthe Ash Dieback Reconstitution Scheme and the Reconstitution and UnderplantingScheme - but were deemed inadequate to address farmers' losses.

Read full article at €79mash dieback scheme set to be approved (rte.ie)

If you wish to find out more, please visit ourwebsites

www.forestryservices.ie

www.euroforestireland.ie

www.ashdieback.ie

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