Ash dieback plan is ‘dead in the water’

The Ash Dieback Action Plan is “dead in the water”, the Irish Forest Owners’ (IFO) chair Derek McCabe claimed this week.

With all the country’s forestry resources directed at the salvage of the 10m tonnes of timber knocked by storms Éowyn and Darragh, McCabe said progress in clearing ash dieback plantations has virtually stalled.

“There is an acceptance that ash dieback will take a back seat to the fallout from storm Éowyn,” explained McCabe.

With every timber harvester and forwarder in the country committed to the ongoing windblow salvage operations, the IFO chair said it could be two years before forestry contractors come back to finish clearing ash dieback plantations.

“It will be too late at that stage. In two years time most of the ash will be totally rotten,” McCabe maintained.

The IFO chair, who is a member of the Ash Dieback Taskforce, claimed that applications for site removal grants and other ash dieback supports have been made on just 5,000ha in total.

This is less than one-third of the country’s 16,000ha of grant-aided ash that was planted in Ireland between 1990 and 2013.

Action plan

The Government last year announced a €79.5m Ash Dieback Action Plan. This package included a doubling of the payment to clear diseased sites from €1,000/ha to €2,000/ha.

There was also a €5,000/ha Climate Action Performance Payment for plantation owners who had joined the Department of Agriculture’s Reconstitution for Ash Dieback Scheme.

However, with no support applications made as yet on around 10,000ha of ash, McCabe predicted that the diseased trees may not be removed from as much as half of this ground.

“It’s possible that half the €79.5m will never be drawn down,” he added. A collapse in timber prices in the wake of storm Éowyn has added to the financial pressures on ash plantation owners.

“Ash growers were getting €30/t or around €1,500/ha for salvage timber for firewood. That’s now gone because timber prices have collapsed,” McCabe explained.