Eighteen months after the devastation wrought by storms Darragh and Éowyn, the Department of Agriculture does not have a system in place to measure how much downed timber has been salvaged from private woodlands or what area of damaged forestry has yet to be cleared.

The Department also admitted that no estimate is available for the total cost of the storms on the forestry sector.

Between 26,000ha and 27,500ha of forestry was levelled or suffered severe damage when the storms struck the country in December 2024 and January 2025.

ADVERTISEMENT

Around 13,000ha of the damaged forests was privately owned, with close to 14,500ha of Coillte's estate affected by the storms.

While Coillte put the cost of the storm damage to its forests at €80m, no accurate figures are available for the private forests or for the overall forestry sector.

Establishing the cost of the storm damage for private forest owners “would be difficult to ascertain”, the Department claimed.

Harvesting

“Individual owners will have been affected differently, depending on the age and circumstances of the affected forest,” the spokesperson maintained.

“Information from the sector suggests that there is approximately a 50% increase in harvesting costs in windblow sites. There will also be the cost to the owner associated with felling at a sub-optimal age and selling at a time when there is an oversupply of product in the market,” the Department spokesperson explained.

The Department has estimated that around 10 million cubic metres of timber suffered windblow damage, predominantly in conifer plantations older than 20 years of age.

“By way of comparison, in 2023, 4.3 million cubic metres of timber was harvested from Ireland’s forests,” the Department spokesperson said.

With regard to the progress in clearing privately-owned windblown forests or how long the process will take, the Department conceded that it had no accurate information.

“The Department does not maintain records of areas that have been cleared following storm Éowyn and/or storm Darragh,” a Department spokesperson said.

The spokesperson suggested that Forestry Industries Ireland (FII) or the Social Economic Environmental Forestry Association (SEEFA) may have estimates of the salvage work done on private woodlands.

Frustration

There is frustration at the slow progress in clearing the windblown plantations and growing fears that the value of the timber recovered from the affected forests will be significantly reduced by the time that it is harvested.

The difficulties associated with clearing the windblown forests have been exacerbated by a shortage of contractors.

Despite the mounting concerns, a windblow taskforce which was established by the Department in the wake of the storms has not met since early February this year.

Meanwhile, around 5,500ha of Coillte's damaged plantations have been harvested to date, with the work to clear the remaining forests forecast to take until summer next year.

“We are making good progress with over 9,000 hectares of blown forests left to harvest and we’re on target to complete the storm damage recovery in mid-2027,” a Coillte spokesperson said.

A €55m Reconstitution Windblow Scheme (RSW) was introduced by the Department in mid-April to assist forest owners affected by storms Darragh and Éowyn to re-establish woodlands.

However, forestry advisers told the Irish Farmers Journal that the immediate focus for most private forestry owners was on getting sites cleared rather than replanting.