POLITICIANS WILL SEEK Cabinet approval for a nearly €80 million package to support landowners whose forests have been impacted by ash dieback, a deadly fungal disease that is wiping out many of the country’s ash trees.

The scheme would offer €5,000 per hectare to farmers who clear ash sites and re-establish new forests in their place.

The €79.5 million, sought by Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue and Green Party Minister Pippa Hackett, is in addition to an existing €160 million scheme that pays farmers to clear their ash forests and replant them with a different species.

The average ash plantation is 3 hectares, meaning a payment of €15,000 for those landowners, in addition to grants covering the costs of clearing and re-establishing the site.

Farmers who have already cleared and re established sites under previous ash dieback schemes will also qualify for this €5,000/hectare payment.

The €79.5million will provide for a €5,000 per hectare payment to farmers who clear ash sites and re-establish new forests in their place.

‘National emergency’

An independent review into the government’s response to ash dieback disease last year labelled the issue a “national emergency requiring a national and State-led coordinated response”.

Ash dieback is a serious disease of ash trees that is caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus.

The disease first emerged in Europe in the 1990s and has spread across the continent via wind-borne spores and the transportation of infected young trees.

Ash trees have been monitored in Ireland since 2008 and the disease was first detected in 2012.

It’s believed that the disease came to Ireland via infected saplings.

Once the fungus infects a tree, the dead or dying branches become brittle and fall.

Over time, the tree loses nutrition, water and the leaves which produce its food, which ends up killing the tree.

The disease now affects approximately 16,000 hectares of ash forests in Ireland.