Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 17 November 2016
236. Deputy Brendan Smith asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the average length of time it takes to respond to reports of possible ash dieback disease; the average time it takes to complete appropriate investigations and determine a positive or negative finding; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35662/16]
View answerThe Department, in line with the commitments given in the Customer Charter and Customer Action Plan 2015-2020 endeavours to acknowledge reports of possible ash dieback disease received by email within 1 working day and in the case of reports received by letter within 3 working days. The Department will endeavour to issue a more comprehensive reply within 20 working days thereafter. Receipt of all reports successfully submitted using the TreeCheck App are also automatically acknowledged.
The time taken to complete field investigations and testing can vary greatly depending on the individual circumstances of the case reported. The time taken to complete this work and inform the forest owner of the outcome is dependent on the following factors:
- the level of detail initially supplied by a reporting party;
- assessment by the Department’s Inspectors as to whether ash dieback disease is actually involved and an evaluation of the potential risk associated with the report;
- the need in terms of the efficient and prudent use of public resources to schedule follow-up visits on such reports with other already planned survey work or inspections, and
- the need for both the Department’s Inspectors and its laboratory scientists to prioritise different bodies of work at different times of the year.
Depending on the above factors, the time taken to report the final outcome to forest owners could be anything between three weeks and three months.
In terms of calculating the average time taken to reply to reported cases it is not practical to do so given that there are now 255 confirmed cases of ash dieback disease in forest plantations. The number of cases that would have to be revisited to calculate this figure is much greater than this figure if sites with negative test results are taken into account. Furthermore, an average figure would be a poor indicator of how long an individual forest owner could expect to wait for a reply from the Department given the significant range that exists between the shortest response time and the longest.
