Farmer forced to fell the trees that should have been his cover for a secure retirement

PADDY STOKES’ retirement plans have been stolen from him by ash dieback. Already past pension age, the Tipperary farmer was looking to his ash plantation as his pension plot, but 30 years of deliberate and careful planning has been destroyed by the disease.

Based just outside Clonmel, on the Waterford border, Mr Stokes planted 20 acres with ash between 1989 and 1991. This plantation was to be his future, the investment that would insure a steady income when he retired from farming.

All that changed in late 2018 when his plantation became infected with ash dieback.

“I thought I’d be retired at this stage. I had hoped that this ash would give me a pension but there is not a hope of that now,” he says.

“I first heard of ash dieback back in 2012 when the first case was discovered in Leitrim. I gradually followed the spread of it and I was in fear all the time.

“A year and a half ago it was confirmed that I had ash dieback and it has gone through my plantation. It’s worthless at the moment, utterly worthless.

“By about 2014 we all had a fatalistic outlook about it. It was spreading so fast and there were very few places in the country that were not affected,” he says.

“In April and May of last year when the trees were coming into leaf, I’d say maybe 30pc of my trees were affected. By the end of October I would say that was up to 80 or 90pc. I have never seen such a rapid spread of a disease in my life.

“I have a licence to thin the trees and we will be doing some of that through the course of this year but it is a pointless exercise.

“The forestry is so badly affected now that it is really a clear-fell situation that is needed. But I can’t get a clear fell licence. There is no way I would get that. There is nothing I can do.”

Mr Stokes believes that the scale of the ash dieback disaster in Ireland is far worse than anything that has been indicated by the Forest Service or Department of Agriculture.

He estimates that the value of ash lost to the disease here will exceed €1 billion.

He is calling on the Department and the government to step in and put in appropriate measures to support plantation owners.

“If something like this happened in any other industry, there would be a proper scheme in place to put it right,” he says. “We have now had three different schemes but they are nowhere near sufficient. They have just been a drop in the ocean.

“If you take a conservative estimate and value a hectare of mature ash to be worth around €50,000 to €60,000 and we have

Losses:

Paddy Stokes in his ash plantation where he says between 80 and 90pc of the trees have been infected by Ash dieback 26,000 hectares in the country, you are looking at well over €1bn.

“That’s the cost of the forestry and this has also taken a massive toll on people’s health and wellbeing. This has affected people really badly.

“The Forestry Commission in Britain have put the cost of ash dieback over there at around £15bn. That just gives an idea of what we are dealing with. The schemes we’ve had here are barely scratching the surface.”

Mr Stokes says he and other plantation owners are angry at how ash dieback was managed by the Department and the Forest Service. He believes that the importation of ash trees from mainland Europe should have been stopped years before the first case reached Ireland in 2012.

He also believes that more could have been done to halt its rapid spread through Ireland and to develop an effective way of treating infected trees.

“I am incredibly disappointed with the Forest Service. I feel that the way that this whole situation has been managed from day one was insufficient,” he says.

“To me, it seems like the administration of forestry is in chaos in Ireland. No-one is getting any felling licences, no-one is getting any planting licences. No-one really seems to know what they are doing.”

As well as his plantation, Mr Stokes runs a tillage and drystock farm between Clonmel and Carrick-on-Suir. While he had hoped to retire from farming a few years ago, he is now operating the farm as a partnership with his son.

‘Nationally you are looking at losses of well over €1 billion… and this has also taken a massive toll on people’s health and wellbeing. It has affected people really badly’