Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 10 March 2021
1047. Deputy Jackie Cahill asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if the total expense of the additional ecologists recruited by his Department had been compared in terms of value for money to the costed woodland environmental planning grant proposal submitted to his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13548/21]
View answerThe introduction of a new requirement for an Environmental report supported by a Planning grant is one of the recommendations in the Mackinnon report. The implementation report by Jo O’Hara, accepted by me, will now be advanced under Project Woodland.
This, however, is a completely separate issue to the funding of ecologists which are an integral part of the licence approval process.
Therefore, there has been no comparison made between the amount of money spent on ecologists and any proposal for planning grants, nor would it be appropriate to do so. Any Natura Impact Statements prepared by the sector, while providing a time saving to the Department, would still require to be examined by Department ecologists and the Department ecologists would be required to prepare an Appropriate Assessment Determination for any site where Appropriate Assessment is required.
