DEAR SIR:

In 2000, I decided to plant 35 acres of marginal land with ash as part of a retirement fund and because of my interest in trees and forestry.

This brought in a nice tax-free income which was much better than the 40-odd cattle I was keeping on the land up to then. Three years ago I thinned out the forestry and was delighted with the thinning grant and lovely ash timber for stoves for the family.

This is where the nice story ends, as the forestry was hit with ash dieback. All the nice people who talked me into forestry have run for the hills and left me and hundreds of other private forestry owners with ash dieback in a total financial mess. The information available to me from the Forestry Department to date is:

Option 1 - Remove the ash and replant with some other species of tree and receive the remaining grant for three years but no further payment, which means no income for years. It was suggested to put in spruce trees, which are fast-growing, but would you put spruce in ash-quality land?

Option 2 - Remove the ash and return the land into grass but give back all the forestry grant monies.

No matter how I approach this, my loss will be around €200,000 but this problem was generated by the Department allowing foreign young ash trees to be imported into the country with no biosecurity measures in place.

I would advise anyone thinking of getting into forestry to be careful. This is just one disease to hit forestry to date but what other disease is around the corner waiting to wipe out your crop? Forestry is a lifetime commitment for the land involved and the Department will hold you to this no matter what happens. If the Department don’t wake up to this problem, farmers won’t plant.