Forestry

A forest is characterised as land with a minimum area of 0.1 ha under stands of trees 5 m or greater, having a minimum width of 20 m and canopy cover of 20% or more within the forest boundary; or trees able to reach such thresholds.

EU statistics indicate that Ireland is one of the least densely wooded Member States of the EU along with Malta, and the Netherlands.
Forest cover in Ireland is 11% (Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, 2020). This compares with an average 33.5% at an EU level and 30.6% at a global level.
Sweden has the largest forest cover in the EU representing approximately 68.95% of the country’s total surface area (28 million hectares) and the five largest wooded areas were in Norway, Spain, Finland, France and Germany.
At an EU level, forest area increased by almost 10 % between 1990-2019 (Eurostat, 2020).

The Annual Forest Sector Statistics Report published by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) in 2020 provides a comprehensive overview of the state of Irish forests. Specifically, in Ireland:

Forest cover was estimated at 770,020 ha or 11% of the total land area of Ireland in 2017.
Forest cover was estimated to be at its highest level in over 350 years.
Of the total forest area in 2017, nearly 391,357 ha or 50.8% was in public ownership.
Of this, 380,156 ha of the public forest area is managed by Coillte.
Forest estates consists 71.2% conifers and 28.7% broadleaves.
Nearly three quarters of existing forest area is under 30 years of age.
Since the foundation of the State the area of land under forest in Ireland has grown from 1.4% to 11% of the current land area.
Sitka spruce was the most common species, occupying 51.1% of the forest area. Over one quarter of the forest estate contains broadleaves. Of the broadleaves 33.6% are ‘Other broadleaf species’ (both long living and short living), of which over half are willow. The next largest broadleaf species groups were birch (24.4%), ash (13.1%) and oak (9.2%).
County Leitrim is the most forested county nationally, with almost 19% of land under forest. This is followed by County Wicklow (17.9%) and County Clare (17.2%) of land under forest.