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by Oisín Ó Néill, IWT Nature Advocacy Officer
First published: 13 July 2026
Last week the Government published A Living Land (Phase 2 of Ireland’s Land Use Review). The report contains a number of recommendations and ambitious modelled pathways for how Ireland could use its land over the coming decades. The Department has explicitly stated the report “is not an articulation of government policy or a new strategy in relation to land use, nor has it been adopted by the Government.” It’s important to bear in mind that the figures and scenarios it contains are therefore possible future pathways rather than Government commitments.
Nature must be at the heart of Land Use
The report’s main recommendation is the creation of a national land use governance framework through a Land Use Taskforce, co-chaired by the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, with senior representatives from Housing and other relevant departments and agencies. The Taskforce would be responsible for balancing food production with restoring nature, improving water quality, and climate adaptation and mitigation.
Those familiar with Ireland’s draft Nature Restoration Plan will rightly ask whether the EU Nature Restoration Regulation was fully considered during the preparation of this report. If a Land Use Taskforce is established, it should have shared responsibility for overseeing nature restoration. Policies on restoring nature need to be embedded within every future decision about how Ireland’s land is managed.
The report lays out the scale of Ireland’s biodiversity crisis. Around 85% of Ireland’s EU-protected habitats are in unfavourable condition. Agricultural land use is identified as the most prevalent pressure, affecting more than 70% of protected habitats, while forestry impacts around 35%. Despite the EU target to protect 30% of land for biodiversity, only 13% of Ireland’s land currently has protected status.
The report also calls for policies that “drive extensive peat soil rehabilitation and restoration to achieve long-term climate and biodiversity objectives”. Bord na Móna has rehabilitated approximately 24,500 hectares of peatlands yet only around one-quarter of Ireland’s peatlands are currently considered healthy enough to provide essential ecosystem services such as carbon storage, water filtration, and flood regulation. Unauthorised industrial-scale peat extraction has also been identified by the 2026 UN Special Rapporteur report as a significant driver of habitat loss and biodiversity decline. Ireland has also faced legal action before the European Court of Justice over failures to adequately protect peatland habitats under EU environmental law.
Forestry needs to be Nature Friendly
Afforestation is one of the report’s most ambitious sections. Ireland is currently planting only around 1,700-2,000 hectares of forest annually, well below the Government’s existing target of 8,000 hectares each year. Under the report’s “high ambition” pathway, planting would increase to 16,000 hectares annually until 2030 before rising to 25,000 hectares every year between 2031 and 2080. If achieved, this would result in approximately 2.3 million hectares of forestry by 2100, covering around 30% of Ireland’s land area.
To put that into perspective, planting 25,000 hectares annually would be roughly equivalent to repeating the total amount of afforestation achieved over the past nine years every single year.
Importantly, the report states that “productive conifer forests could deliver stronger climate mitigation out to 2050 compared with broadleaf forests but would deliver lower biodiversity benefits.” Ireland has historically lost much of its native woodland, and we continue to have one of the lowest levels of forest cover in Europe. The current forestry model dominated by non- native conifers places significant pressure on ecosystems and biodiversity. The coniferous forestry model has been identified as the leading pressure on Blue Dot catchments (Ireland’s most pristine waterways)-, sedimentation and acidification associated with plantation forestry can severely damage river systems. With Irish rivers already under serious pressure, and species such as Atlantic Salmon and Freshwater Pearl Mussels facing severe decline, any expansion of afforestation should prioritise native broadleaf woodland and diverse mixed-species forests, which provide significantly greater biodiversity benefits than commercial monoculture conifer plantations. Future forestry policy must also move away from continued reliance on large-scale commercial conifer plantations, given their well-documented impacts on biodiversity, water quality, and soil health.
Farming for Nature needs to be Incentivised and Rewarded
Several of the report’s modelled pathways also envisage a shift towards alternative land uses, including increased tillage, plant protein production, forestry, and bioenergy. Such changes could create more diverse landscapes and improve habitat connectivity, although they are likely to prove politically contentious as we can expect opposition centred on concerns about farm incomes, rural communities, and food security, despite the fact that around 90% of Ireland’s dairy production and approximately 90% of its beef production is exported. Reducing reliance on intensive livestock production would represent a positive shift for biodiversity, as intensive dairy farming remains one of the greatest pressures on Ireland’s rivers and freshwater ecosystems through nutrient pollution and agricultural runoff.
One possible pathway is described as “multifunctional land use based on extensive cattle systems”. It envisages lower stocking rates alongside payments to farmers for delivering ecosystem services. Significantly, it is also the only one of the five pathways that the report concludes would have a negative economic impact under current market conditions. At the same time, this pathway would deliver the greatest increase in High Nature Value farmland and ecosystem services. The report notes that these services “could become marketable in future, generating significant (diversified) income.” In other words, the biodiversity benefits are clear, but current markets and support schemes do not adequately reward them.
Water Quality and River Health needs to be urgently addressed
Water quality remains another major challenge. Around 46% of Ireland’s surface waters are in unfavourable ecological condition, while the Water Action Plan 2024 identifies agriculture as the most common and significant pressure, affecting more than 1,000 water bodies.
The report recognises that some of its more “efficient” pathways could reduce overall nutrient losses while maintaining agricultural output. However, it also warns that they could exacerbate localised water quality pressures through high stocking rates on dairy land. National averages may improve, but individual catchments could still face severe environmental pressures.
With yet another fish kill reported last week, it is more important than ever that the pressures facing our rivers, chief among them agricultural pollution, are addressed.
The State needs to lead by example on Public Land
Ultimately, around 80% of Ireland’s land is privately owned, and the report repeatedly identifies farmers and landowners as the “ultimate decision-makers”. Any large-scale transition towards nature-positive land use will therefore depend on incentives, agri-environment schemes, payments for ecosystem services, and long-term financial certainty, rather than regulation alone.
This was also one of the recurring themes during consultation on Ireland’s draft Nature Restoration Plan, where the State placed significant emphasis on voluntary participation while showing comparatively little ambition for restoring nature on publicly owned land.
Nature restoration anywhere is welcome. But one of the clearest messages from both the Nature Restoration Plan process and A Living Land remains unchanged: the State must lead by example. This was one of our key asks throughout the Nature Restoration Plan consultation. Public bodies, including Coillte and Bord na Móna, need refreshed mandates that prioritise nature restoration alongside sustainable production rather than commercial extraction. While private landowners require long-term financial certainty and stronger incentives to restore nature on their own land, the State should lead by example and demonstrate what ambitious restoration looks like on the land it already owns and manages.
Ambition to Action
A Living Land sets out ambitious possibilities for how Ireland could transform its landscapes over the coming decades. The real question is whether these possibilities can be converted into legislation, funding and binding policy. Given the report’s own disclaimer that none of its pathways have been adopted as Government policy, and the lack of ambition shown in Ireland’s draft Nature Restoration Plan, that remains very much an open question.