ANOTHER LIFE/Michael Viney: My fantasy life as a do-it-yourself architect is nourished these days by TV programmes taped for us by a daughter living in the urban cableland. Grand Designs the other night was about a young English couple who built a big, cross-shaped country house, framed entirely in green oak.
It cost a fortune and looked ravishing inside and out, but two things shocked me deeply. One was that this house, for one small family, took the timber from 85 mature oak trees, or almost a hectare of commercial forest.
The other was that the price of a Scottish oak tree 150 years old was a mere £150. I found it incredible that such majestic trees, each with its rich complement of wildlife, should be laid low for so little.
How, at this rate, can we expect our farmers to consider planting oak as a commercial crop, to help build up Ireland's sources of hardwood and to improve our countryside for people and nature? An immediate answer is that very few of them are doing so. Even with 20-year establishment grants, oaks comprise only a few per cent of new farm planting for forestry.
The price quoted in Grand Designs seems fairly basic, and "quality" oak grown on the very best land may achieve a much higher value. But the economics of oak continue to concern the NGOs devoted to promoting native trees. The more sanguine, Arcadian visions are challenged by foresters, who share much the same goals but insist on the basic role of profit. And as development potential helps to push up land values, the initial premium grants for broadleaves grow steadily less seductive.
Jack Tennison, who manages established mixed woods in Ireland and Wales, has made a tough analysis of current economics: "Any farmer who plants his farm will immediately reduce its worth by at least a third if he plants Sitka and by more than half if he plants oak." Joe Barry, an Irish farmer-forester on the board of Crann, sees inflation eroding the value of premiums, and says farms planted with broadleaves such as oak or beech are "virtually unsaleable".
One solution he offers is a doubling of the 20-year grant period - a measure that seems unlikely to appeal either to the Government or to reformers of CAP. Jack Tennison, too, wants compensation to the landowner "for the loss of capital value in nurturing an asset held for the public benefit" - but warns that could also mean letting the townsfolk walk their dogs in "private" woods.
Both men are apprehensive that, without proper management and continual pruning, thinning and weeding, many farm hardwood plantations will end as expensive firewood smothered in a mass of briars. This is certainly more likely to happen if there is no market for thinnings. In Wales, development agencies have been trying to stimulate demand for small-diameter hardwood logs, but, apart from some success with upmarket floorboards, the hopes of reviving cottage industries to turn out characterful "craft" furniture have so far been largely disappointed.
Even so, the planting of broadleaves, managed for quality, in fertile corners of our farms, retains both virtue and value.
Crann's John Brosnan is one of those prepared to be patient in finding solutions: "Let nobody tell me there are no possibilities in the marketplace when I see hickory handles on spades and American ash legs on kitchen chairs." An ironic footnote to this is offered in the Good Wood Policy Guide, a new publication from Just Forests. This is the group, with Tom Roche as chairman, that helped to introduce to Ireland the certification of imported timber through the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
One of the scheme's enthusiastic supporters is the True Temper company of Cork, supplier of garden tools to B&Q, the UK's leading DIY chain, with some 300 stores. B&Q insists that its suppliers know the exact forest locations of their wood sources and that they can demonstrate they are "well managed and sustainable".
True Temper went travelling to find the answer in the woods of Pennsylvania, in the US, and, having established "the chain of custody from growing ash tree to finished garden tool", was proud to receive FSC certification for its products.
Doesn't Ireland grow enough ash trees for spade handles? Far from it, apparently: much of the ash needed for our hurleys is imported from the UK, and it will be another decade before our new ash plantations begin to meet demand.
Meanwhile, this vigorous and colourful new booklet brings home the need for a more responsible approach by the Irish timber trade and its end users. In 2000, Ireland imported tropical wood and wood products worth €133 million - up by almost half in one year. Much of it came from questionable, uncertified sources. At the same time, thousands of tons of "scrap" hardwood in doors and windows were dumped by demolition contractors without thought of salvage.
The Good Wood Policy Guide, designed to influence everyone from architects to woodwork teachers, lists companies dealing in certified timber and offers the timber purchasing policy of Offaly County Council as a model of good practice. It costs €7.62, from Just Forests at Bury Quay, Tullamore, Co Offaly.