With the introduction of a comprehensive environmentally friendly programme for managing our forests, from seed to sawdust, the era of Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) has dawned in Ireland.

SFM aims to ensure that the stewardship and usage of forest lands enables them to maintain their biodiversity, productivity, reforestation capacity and vitality. Forests must be able to fulfil their ecological, economic and social functions without causing damage to other ecosystems.

The SFM programme includes a new National Forest Standard supported by a Code of Best Forest Practice, the first of its kind in Europe, and a suite of environmental guidelines relating to water quality, archaeology and landscape as well as biodiversity and the environmental impact of harvesting.

The programme's introduction has placed the Republic at the forefront of the international commitment to SFM.

The National Forest Standard outlines the basic indicators relating to SFM implementation and the measures for monitoring its progress under Irish forest conditions. By taking the lead in Europe with our Code of Best Forest Practice, we are setting the standards for all forestry operations covered by SFM.

The five environmental guidelines are the mechanisms by which the Forest Service will ensure that the environmental aspects of SFM are implemented. Compliance with the guidelines is a condition of grant aid and tree-felling licences. Ongoing monitoring, including site inspections, by the Forest Service inspectorate will ensure compliance with the guidelines.

The new initiative has been recognised as the single most important development in a sector which not only employs over 16,000 people but also has a critical contribution to make to the quality of our environment. The ground-breaking programme was published following an extensive consultation process, involving the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources, the forestry industry, non-governmental organisations, the research community, local authorities, fisheries boards, other State agencies and the public.

The management of our country's forests affects us all, and it is important that the SFM programme should have the widest support. I am delighted, therefore, with the broad welcome given to it by such organisations as An Taisce, Duchas, the fisheries boards, research agencies, the Irish Farmers' Association, the Irish Timber Growers' Association, the Society of Irish Foresters and the forest industry chain of IBEC.

The launch of this initiative is a solid start, but I am determined that SFM will not be merely an aspiration; it must be the basis upon which our forests are managed. The production of quality wood from our forests must not be achieved to the detriment of our environment.

The forestry industry must ensure that environmental issues are incorporated into everyday activity and decision-making at all levels. The industry, together with all the other stakeholders, must consider environmental harmony in all its operations and balance financial returns with sustainability.

The implementation of SFM will involve a partnership between all those in the forestry sector: landowners, contractors, saw-millers, local authorities and State agencies. The recent claims made by one organisation in The Irish Times that "forests managed according to the new National Forest Standard were unlikely to reach the standards required by the FSC [Forest Stewardship Council]" is simply untrue and betrays an agenda of misinformation.

JUST FORESTS, the FSC contact in Ireland, has stated: "The new forest standard is an excellent framework for independent forest certification bodies to work from when assessing Ireland's entitlement for the world's most coveted independent quality mark, the FSC logo." This is high praise indeed for the Forest Service and for all who contributed so much to the formulation of the new programme.

Certain facts are often ignored by critics of the forestry industry, giving the public a misleading impression as to its environmental benefits.

Increasing Ireland's forest cover will be a vital element in meeting our obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or Kyoto Protocol.

I am committed to working towards the national target of increasing forest cover in the Republic from the current level of 9 per cent of land area to 17 per cent by 2030. We have increased afforestation grant and premium levels by 30 per cent this year and maintained the higher levels of incentives relating to broad-leaved trees in these increases. The national target for broad-leaved trees has also been increased from 20 per cent to 30 per cent of planting this year.

Forestry is probably the only economic activity that will contribute positively to our environmental obligations. Indeed, forests offer a most efficient carbon sink and a means of controlling greenhouse gas emissions and potential global warming.

Forests take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, fixing or "sequestering" it for many decades or even hundreds of years. Trees are the lungs of the planet. One hectare of conifer trees, for example, removes 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide from our atmosphere every year, replenishing it with oxygen.

The much-maligned Sitka Spruce is the most efficient of these lungs. The earning potential of forestry for farmers and its importance as an integral part of rural development cannot be disregarded.

Forestry fits in well with other farming ventures and enables farmers to continue to live and work on their land. Criticism, if constructive, can stimulate debate, and I welcome informed debate on the development of forestry and of our new national standards.

Those environmental non-government organisations who took part in the consultation process asked that an ongoing monitoring process be included in the standard. I was happy to do this because I believe that the standards must be evolutionary and must take account of the lessons we will all learn from working together to implement sustainable forest management.

Hugh Byrne is Minister of State at the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources with special responsibility for forestry