The application for a tree felling licence for the person named was received on 25th June 2019. A revised Natura Impact Statement (NIS) was received on 13th April, 2021 and the file has been assigned to an ecologist for assessment. This usually takes two to three months.
Once that work is complete, the application will be returned to the Forestry District Inspector, who will complete the assessment and make their recommendations. The recommendations will form part of the decision on the application, which will be issued to the person named, when available.
My Department receives applications for forestry licences and issues decisions daily. There will always be applications in the system at various stages, from the earliest steps in an application before it is fully submitted, right through to decision. The total number of applications on hand is 6,058, which includes 1,745 applications recently submitted by Coillte.
We intend to issue 4,500 licences this year which is a 75% increase on last year and we remain committed to that target. Licences issued year to date are 20% ahead of last year. Weekly updates are provided in our published forestry dashboard.
The average length of time to decision for felling licences for those decided in 2021 is 12 months. It is ten months for afforestation and nine months for roads.
The clearing of the backlog of licences is a priority for Minister of State Hackett who has responsibility for forestry and myself. Increased resources have been invested in dealing with files on hand and under Project Woodland a dedicated group, Working Group 1, is tasked with looking at the backlog.
This Group has already met nine times and has examined in detail the cases on hand and is producing specific recommendations for improving output, including a definition of the backlog, which will be brought to the Project Board for consideration.
