Kathleen Conroy, our ForES PhD at Trinity College Dublin, writes a potted history of Irish forests, when and why deforestation on a major scale began - & when the comeback started... It can be hard to imagine that counties Meath, Louth and Limerick were covered in forests at one time. In fact, most of Ireland was forested about 9,000 years ago. Looking at pollen records, plants became established in Ireland approximately 13,000 years ago with trees arriving 9,600 years ago (M