Ireland is falling significantly short of its afforestation targets, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) has found in its report on public services for 2025, Agriland reports. Forests cover about 800,000 hectares, 11.6 percent of the state, well below the EU average of 38.3 percent cited in the report.
The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine aims for 18 percent forest cover in the long term. Reaching it by around 2050 would need an extra 16,000 hectares a year, the C&AG said, but the department's target for net additional planting is 8,000 hectares, "at which rate it would take at least 50 years".
Even that target has been missed by a wide margin every year since it was marginally exceeded in 2015. Despite a rise in planting in 2025, only 2,527 hectares were planted, a 68 percent shortfall. For 2026 the finance division funded planting in line with expected demand of just 3,000 hectares.
From 2015 to 2025 the department spent about €946 million on forestry schemes, €82 million of it in 2025, nearly all linked to afforestation, ash dieback replanting or forest roads. About half of last year's spending, €41.8 million, went on annual premiums still owed under past programmes. A scheme to plant native woodland on public land, launched in 2020 with a target of 150 hectares a year, averaged 12 hectares a year from 2023 to 2025.
Photo: Richard Webb / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Source: Agriland
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