ESB Flash the Cash for Ash
Talking Balls
As part of their support for the All Ireland Minor Football and Hurling Championships, ESB have greatly encourage local hurley makers by announcing at the compeitition launch that they will be growing 20,000 native ash trees along Liffey Forest near the Blessington Lakes by 2010 to assist the future supply of hurleys. An added benefit of the programme is the carbon-reduction achieved by tree-growing.
In the week that Hibernia Insurance announced they were f***ing away off out of Ireland, and ESRI announced that its officially ‘now a Recession stupid,’ it is a relief to hear the trees aren’t being outsourced and grown in
Approximately 75 percent of the planted trees should yield between 6 and 8 hurleys each after a growing period of approximately 25 to 30 years. At present Ireland imports 60 percent of the Ash required to meet hurlers’ annual needs. Participants in the “Cúl Green” partnership between ESB and the GAA, will be able to have an Ash tree planted.ESB already has several hundred acres of land under afforestation and will continue to investigate how the company can expand the Ash planting initiative.
Said ESB Chief Executive Padraig McManus, the programme was all part of ESB’s approach to sustainability: “ESB cannot grow sufficient numbers of Ash trees to meet the total requirement but this initiative will go some way towards offsetting the need to import the timber - as well as helping the environment. We will begin with over 20 acres and then assess how the programme can be rolled out in the future”, the Chief Executive said.
Fair play to him - if they keep this up it won’t be long before them Kilkenny fellas can go all the way to Croke Park without their feet ever touching the ground - the way it used to be all those years ago.