In Ireland the political consensus to expand forest cover has not been really questioned for the last five decades, neither by policy-makers nor by forest owners’ representatives. But in the last five years, Irish private forest owners have experienced for the first time in their life several major severe catastrophes: the outbreak of Phytophtora on larch in 2010, the arrival of Chalara on ash in 2012, and a catastrophic windstorm on Sitka spruce plantations in 2014. All these events have shaken their convictions and beliefs about the real benefits of afforestation. For forest policy makers, framing discourses and defining strategies about risk management is now a priority in order to reassure forest owners, to incentivize them to plant again and at the same time to warn them about future risks related to forestry. Our paper aims at exploring how policy makers and forest owners are managing these multiple risks and what strategies they favour. Firstly we will see how recent climate related events have amazed forest owners and stakeholders. Secondly we will see that structural factors (wood markets, insurance costs) and individual beliefs (mistrust in institutional discourses, routines) have hampered the implementation of adaptive strategies. Thirdly we will analyse how economic incentives (reconstitution scheme), legal instruments (ban on planting some tree species) and communications tools have contributed to assist forest owners in their decision-making, in particular to reconstitute the forest after the storm Darwin. Finally we will see that Irish forest stakeholders are now gradually moving from risk undervaluing to risk integration and management.