Vol. 498 No. 1
68 Ms McManus asked the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources the estimated value of the discovery of additional land under afforestation arising from the new satellite based forest inventory and planning system; if he has satisfied himself that procedures are now in place to give an accurate measurement of land under forestry; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26467/98]
The forest inventory and planning system is a highly developed computer based information platform which has succeeded in identifying the national forest estate to within accuracies of 99 per cent. The recent inventory has disclosed the national forest estate to be 606,000 hectares. This figure is in line with the expected total forest cover for the country. An area of around 4,000 hectares, however, was identified in the inventory which was not included in earlier inventories. The maximum potential value of this area would be approximately £20,000 per hectare. The total estimated value of the additional forest estate on this basis would at a maximum be £80 million. The system, which lends itself to constant updating will be capable of producing accurate statistics on forest cover well into the new millennium. It is also noteworthy that this inventory showed the proportion of broadleaved forests is now 21 per cent, 1 per cent above previous inventories.
