The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has provided a breakdown of the total area of ash plantations per county, grant-aided through DAFM forestry schemes.
There are 6,500 individual owners of ash plantations established under state-funded schemes between 1990 and 2013, according to the DAFM’s action plan on ash dieback.
The DAFM said “it is recognised that most ash plantations will likely be affected by ash dieback”. The disease was first found in Ireland in 2012 and is now present in every county.
A total of €10 million has been expended to date on schemes to deal with ash dieback, with interventions made on 1,700ha, the DAFM’s recently published action plan states.
Ash plantations
Co. Tipperary has the largest area of ash trees at a total of 2,378ha which accounts for 14.96% of the total forest area in the county grant-aided through a DAFM scheme.
The table below shows the percentage and size of the total area of ash plantations grant-aided by the DAFM through forestry schemes and broken down by county.
County % of total grant-aided ash forests Hectares Carlow 0.56 89 Cavan 2.83 450 Clare 7.83 1,245 Cork 11.92 1,895 Donegal 1.32 210 Dublin 0.33 52 Galway 4.53 720 Kerry 4.85 771 Kildare 2.89 459 Kilkenny 4.37 695 Laois 2.97 472 Leitrim 1.86 296 Limerick 6.56 1,043 Longford 2.24 356 Louth 0.29 46 Mayo 4.27 679 Meath 4.39 698 Monaghan 0.56 89 Offaly 3.69 587 Roscommon 1.61 256 Sligo 1.29 205 Tipperary 14.96 2,378 Waterford 3.35 533 Westmeath 5.88 935 Wexford 2.82 448 Wicklow 1.83 291
Most recent available National Forest Inventory data for 2022 estimated the area of forest to be 808,848ha or 11.6% of the land area, excluding inland water bodies.
The counties with the largest forest area are Cork at 92,471ha, which equals a 12.4% forest cover, followed by Galway at 63,795ha, with a total forest cover of 10.4% within the county.
The counties with the highest forest cover, however, are Leitrim at 20.1% and 32,039ha, followed by Wicklow with 18.5% forest cover within the county and an area of 37,470ha.
Broadleaf forests account for almost one third of Ireland’s forest estate (30.6%), which is up by 5.9% between 2006 and 2022, while conifer species represent 69.4%.