WHO has ever hugged a tree? Yes, says Fergal Mulloy, vice chair of the European Forest Institute. "It's part of the life. You can't help but hug trees when you like them."
"Absolutely," says Diarmuid McAree, chief inspector of forests at the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources. After all "I'm a forester," he boasts.
They, along with all manner of tree people, run in out of the rain to 90 Merrion Square to hear details of the People's Millennium Forests project. The millennium tree project, explains McAree, aims "to get the message out to people that we have a wood culture, and to go back to trees." Did you know, he adds: "We have the lowest percentage of trees in Europe - bar Iceland - at 9 per cent of the land area. We have a target to get up to 17 per cent within 30 years." Eithne Healy, a member of the national millennium committee which is sponsoring the project with the AIB, is here also to enjoy the bash. Yes, she says, she hugs, well, loves the larches in her garden. Gerry Daly, broadcaster and gardener extraordinaire, says this tree project is "a great idea" and a clever way of heightening awareness.
More than 1.2 million broadleaf trees - a tree for every household - including oak, ash, birch, alder, hazel and yew, have been planted over the past year as part of a project to mark the millennium. The project will be managed by Coillte in partnership with the Woodlands of Ireland group and supported by a number of other environmental organisations.
Every household will soon receive a certificate by post telling them the actual location of their individual tree in one of 14 designated forests around the country, according to Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, who doesn't wait to have warm salad, fillet of beef, creme brulee or even a glass of wine in front of the fire in the elegant rooms of the Merrion Square house, which is owned by the Friends of the National Gallery.
Instead, the Taoiseach must head out into the gale and make for Government Buildings. In the afternoon, he launches Ireland and the Great War by Prof Keith Jeffery at Collins Barracks, and by teatime he arrives in Smithfield to launch An Riocht 2000, the Kerry Association Yearbook. He probably never gets a chance to hug a tree.