Ireland’s Mills Buy a Record Wood Haul Whilst State Forests Sell Less
Growers on private land supplied 371,000 more cubic metres than in 2024, in a year the Central Statistics Office attributes to Storm Éowyn.
Roundwood stacked at an Irish log yard, where mills bought 3.81 million cubic metres in 2025, the most the Central Statistics Office has recorded. (Photo Credit: Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine / Timber in Construction Steering Group)
Private forest owners in Ireland sold 1.61 million cubic metres of roundwood to the country’s mills in 2025, the highest volume the state has recorded from private land in a decade. That is according to the Central Statistics Office, whose Wood Input Purchases by Industry 2025, published on Friday, counts 3.81 million cubic metres bought across the industry, 7 per cent more than in 2024.
“This increase was likely affected by the impact of Storm Éowyn in early 2025,” said Cian Rushe, who works in the CSO’s Environment Division. Éowyn reached Ireland in January last year with gusts Teagasc recorded at 142 kilometres an hour. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has since counted 26,050 hectares of forest damaged across that winter’s two storms, almost 13,000 of them privately owned.
Public forests went the other way, selling 137,000 cubic metres less than in 2024. Their 2.2 million is the lowest the series has counted since 2021, and the national record of 3.81 million came from private supply alone, which rose 371,000 in the same year.
Irish roundwood input purchases by ownership in 2024 and 2025, on the CSO’s revised series. Private volume rose 371,000 cubic metres in the year public volume fell 137,000. (Graphic: Wood Central)
“The volume of timber normally felled over a 2.5 year period was blown down overnight during storm Éowyn in January 2025,” said Michael Healy-Rae, then Minister of State for Forestry. Large sawlog from private forests rose from 567,000 cubic metres to 682,000, a fifth more in a single year. Roundwood sold for burning went from 97,000 to 242,000, the largest movement of any product the survey counts.
Mills bought 340,000 cubic metres of roundwood for burning in 2025, up 94 per cent and the highest the CSO has recorded, whilst public forests supplied just 19,000 more of it than a year earlier. Large sawlog still took 1,603,000 cubic metres, or 42 per cent of everything bought, ahead of pulpwood on 909,000 and small sawlog on 855,000.
How private roundwood purchases in Ireland rose from 1.24 to 1.61 million cubic metres in 2025. Roundwood for burning added 145,000 of the 371,000 increase, more than any other product. (Graphic: Wood Central)
The CSO also changed the 2024 figure it measures from, lifting the year to 3.58 million cubic metres from the 3.52 million it published in December, after enterprises replaced its estimates with filed returns. Non-roundwood purchases reached 575,000 tonnes on their own, 32 per cent above 2024, with woodchip at 418,000 tonnes and sawdust at 93,000. Imported wood sits outside the count entirely, because the CSO asks processors only what they bought from forests in Ireland.
Irish roundwood purchases by ownership across a decade. Public supply is 54,000 cubic metres lower than it was in 2016 whilst private supply has risen 141 per cent, closing the gap between them from 1,583,000 to 585,000. (Graphic: Wood Central)
It comes as Sitka spruce afforestation has fallen from 12,970 hectares in 1993 to 701 hectares in 2025, on figures Martin Heydon, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, gave in a parliamentary answer in April. Teagasc counts the species as vulnerable to windblow from 20 years of age on the growth rates Irish soils produce.
“Nearly two-thirds of the area was afforested with broadleaves, mostly native broadleaves,” Heydon said of last year’s planting. The Social Economic Environmental Forestry Association of Ireland, or SEEFA, has warned the shift could leave housing and construction short of home-grown timber. Forest Industries Ireland made the same case last October, when its director Mark McAuley said the industry had “allowed our planting levels to drop way below what’s needed” and called for new commercial forests.
Winter sun through an Irish conifer plantation, where Sitka spruce planting has fallen from 12,970 hectares in 1993 to 701 hectares last year. (Photo Credit: Irish Forest Owners)
The seven-point Wood-First roadmap that went to cabinet in June was built on a forecast of Irish roundwood production climbing from 5 million cubic metres to almost 7.8 million by 2035. That forecast sits under a target of more than 300,000 new homes by 2030, and the roadmap names Irish-grown timber as the first material public bodies should consider.
Heydon opened applications for the €55 million Reconstitution Scheme for Windblown Forests in April, almost fifteen months after the storm. The department pays the last quarter of each grant four years after the trees go in, and Ireland’s next national Forestry Programme does not begin until 1 January 2028.
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