Millennium trees 'fit and well'

More than three years on and the country's Millennium Trees are fit and well - according to Coillte, the state-backed company that manages forests.

To mark the Millennium, every household in Ireland received a certificate saying that a native tree had been planted in its name.

That led to more than 1.2 million oak, ash, birch, alder, and Scots pine taking root at 16 sites throughout Ireland, both north and south of the border.

Gerry Egan, of Coillte, one of the partners in the project and owners of 12 of the native woodland sites, reported that the response from the public to the tree-planting exercise was “almost universally positive“.

And, because of the overwhelming reaction, the Millennium Committee, headed by the then-government chief whip Seamus Brennan – tagged at the time the Minister for the Millennium – adopted the forests as a flagship scheme.

According to Coillte, handed the management role for the project in the face of complaints from environmentalists because of the absence of a tendering process, the planting has gone remarkably well.

Mr Egan said: “Whether it was the effect of the Millennium or not, someone was definitely looking down on us because we had a very high survival rate.

“Virtually nothing has had to be replanted.

“When the idea was first put forward the immediate concern was that 1.4 million plants would have to be produced. There was always a risk that there would be some failures.”