Friday 18^th July 2008: Brendan Smith, TD, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food today attended a ceremony to mark the rejuvenation and upgrading of the Coillte owned Dun a Ri Forest Park, in Kingscourt, County Cavan.

The re launch comes about as the result of work funded under the Forest Service NeighbourWood Scheme, to improve  the recreational facilities in the park including footpaths, nature trails, seats, signs, picnic tables and car park facilities. In addition, there is a special path developed which will enable access and use by people with particular needs including wheelchair users and parents with baby-buggies. The facilities are suitable for use by people of all age groups and are particularly important for use by families 

Referring to the NeighbourWood Scheme, the Minister commented: "The NeighbourWood scheme is aimed specifically at realising the recreational and wider social benefits that forests can provide.  Ideally a NeighbourWood is a forested area or woodland in or near a town or school, established for aesthetic, recreational, ecological and educational purposes.  Dún a Rí Forest Park was an ideal candidate.  While the forest park is located in my own county Cavan, the facilities here also cater for the wider population catchments of our nearest neighbours in County Meath and County Louth and further afield - in that sense, Dún a Rí is truly a 'NeighbourWood'."

The Minister also spoke briefly about the many returns from forestry including its recreational value, its contribution to the climate change issue, to tourism and to the economy generally.

With reference to Dun a Rí Forest Park itself, he added: "The continued maintenance and recent upgrading of this Forest Park is a testament to the contribution of Coillte to the local environment and to the social well being of our local communities. The continuance of their 'Open Forest' policy throughout the country is to be commended. The policy, established by the old Forest and Wildlife Service in the '70s, continues to form the backbone of recreational facilities, which are accessible to all our citizens.  All of these forests are an enormous contribution to the provision of public open space for many local communities."

Speaking at the event today David Gunning, Chief Executive of Coillte said:

"In an increasingly urban society, Coillte's forests, such as Dun A Ri, offer people an alternative to urban, manicured gardens and parks and are an important part of the social and environmental services which Coillte provides. The improvement of recreation facilities in Coillte's Forest Parks is part of the company's move to encourage greater public use of its 1.1 million acres of forest land."

Coillte has approximately 18 million visits to its recreation areas on an annual basis and has developed a website which has details of trails and recreation facilities – www.coillteoutdoors.ie.

ENDS.

For further information contact

Tom Byrne
Coillte
Tel: 086 810 4224

 

Note to Editors:

Coillte is a commercial company operating in forestry, land based businesses, renewable energy and panel products.

The company employs approx 1,200 people and was established in 1988. It owns over 445,000 hectares of land, about 7% of the land cover of Ireland.

For more information see: www.coillte.ie

Each year, Coillte welcomes over eighteen million visitors to its forests which equates to a value to users of €97m. Coillte has eleven forest parks and over 150 recreation sites throughout the country while Coillte manages over 52% of all national 'waymarked way' trails.

The Coillte Outdoors website -  www.coillteoutdoors.ie - allows anyone interested in outdoor recreation in Ireland to research and plan activities around the country from the comfort of their computers, providing maps and information on the different types of trails which people can visit on any of Coillte's sites.