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Forestry Sector

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 3 November 2020

Tuesday, 3 November 2020

Questions (1495)

Eoin Ó Broin

Question:

1495. Deputy Eoin Ó Broin asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the status of progress made to date on the implementation of the Forestry Act 2020;and the schedule for implementing same. [32441/20]

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Written answers

The Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2020 was signed into law by the President on 2nd October 2020 and the Act commenced on 6th October 2020 in full. The secondary legislation required to give effect to the Act was introduced on 7th October, 2020.

The new Act, amending the Agriculture Appeals Act was designed to align forestry licensing appeals process with best practice in other appeals processes.

The Act provides mechanisms to improve the efficiency and delivery of services to stakeholders by inter alia,

- Increasing the capacity of the Forestry Appeals Committee (FAC) to determine appeals by enabling it to sit in divisions of itself - I have now moved to resource the FAC to commence hearing more appeals in line with the provisions set out in the Act. There are now four committees in place. The scheduling of hearings is a matter the FAC and I understand that all four committees will deal with appeals in November

- Introducing fees for appeals and submissions: fees for both are now in force via SI since 8th October;

- Providing that the FAC may vary, allow, remit or substitute decisions of the Department - this is a matter for the FAC when arriving at their decision on an appeal;

Of course, these are only one part of the improvements to the forestry licencing process and there is an onus on my Department to improve our output of new licences also. To achieve this, we are investing heavily in new resources in terms of new ecologists and new forestry inspectors and have set out detailed plans for increased licencing outputs. These are already showing signs of progerss with the output for both afforestation and felling the highest in the last 12 months.

My Department produces weekly dashboards in order to keep all stakeholders informed on licencing output.

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