Even before Éowyn, the creeping scale of costs was becoming clear as storms and their impacts worsened. As climate breakdown reaches Ireland, private and public coffers will be hit harder and harder.
Farmers encouraged to plant trees in recent decades face income loss from a series of after-effects from storm Éowyn. The challenge is a test for newly appointed junior minister Michael Healy-Rae.
A forestry standards auditor claims he was axed from the role by the NSAI standards body at the behest of the “client” Coillte, the High Court hears. The claims are vigorously denied.
Ireland’s cut-and-come-again plantation forestry model has long faced criticism over its environmental record. Now, with farmers turning away in their droves, the State is looking at an ever bigger headache as planting rates fall off a cliff.
Lack of action for years left the Department of Agriculture short of ecologists. Now, with a backlog of forestry licences to get through with stricter environmental checks, it is filling the knowledge gap with expensive consultancy hires.
The bizarre use of “Brits out”-type arguments in the debate about foreign investment in forestry ignores the influence of multinationals on Ireland’s tax sovereignty – or the need for the assets funded by overseas capital.
Coillte’s decision to raise investor funds through the asset management firm Gresham House has re-lit a passionate debate on forestry. We interview the central people involved at the state-owned company and its two PPP private partners.
Dasos Capital, with strong backing from the State and the European Investment Bank, has quietly assembled the country’s second-largest private forestry portfolio. How did it do it? And, how much is the portfolio worth?
With no momentum to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, removing carbon from the atmosphere is our next best hope of slowing global warming. Yet planting trees is not happening either, which means it is time we put the right price on it.
More than 140 investors in Irish forest fraud Arden Forestry have received letters telling them they are in line for a €2m payout following a global asset chase by the liquidator. But was this case just one part of a larger playbook for serious overseas criminals?
© 2026 Currency Media Limited
