It has been a bad fortnight for forestry, and particularly for farm forestry.

The industry has effectively been on life support since January due to the absence of a new forestry programme.

The hope within Government is that the generous subsidies available under the new support scheme will spark the sector back into life once it is given the green light from Brussels.

However, two events over the last 10 days will have seriously dented farmer confidence in forestry and undermined the ambitious planting targets set out by the Government in its climate change plan.

The first was the insistence by the Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue that no compensation would be paid to plantation owners who have been hit by ash dieback.

The minister then doubled down on this stance by pointing out to farmers, who have lost their shirts and blouses on these ash forests, that they will have to replant the land once they have cleared their dying and rotting trees.

There appears to be no appreciation within Government or the Department of Agriculture of the raw anger and frustration that exists among growers over the ash dieback debacle.

Minister McConalogue pointed out last week that €9.2m has been spent on ash dieback supports.

However, the support scheme has been rejected by the majority of growers. Just 410 landowners have been approved for the ash dieback support package. This is less than 7% of the 6,000 plantation owners who have been impacted by the disease.

The plight of these landowners, many of whom have seen their pension pots wither and die in front of their eyes, has not gone unnoticed among other farmers.

The Government will have some job enticing farmers into forestry – even with the generous premiums touted for the new planting programme – given the manner in which the ash plantation owners have been treated.

Similarly, Coillte faces an uphill battle in enticing farmers into forestry partnerships.

After the Gresham House fiasco earlier this year, Coillte claimed that it planned to work more closely with farmers to deliver the State’s forestry targets.

Confidence

But the evidence delivered to the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture recently shows that Coillte will have to win back the trust and confidence of existing forestry partners before it goes looking for more farmers to get on board with them.

All in all, it looks like the Department can’t see the wood from the trees.