Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 20 October 2021
295. Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the percentage of forestry licence applications which are screened by his Department for appropriate assessments in the past 12 months; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51401/21]
View answerThe Deputy will be aware of certain Court of Justice of the European Union decisions and their subsequent application in the High Court and other appeals bodies, pertaining to the environmental assessment of planning applications.
Forestry licences, that is afforestation, forest road works, aerial fertilisation and tree felling licences are considered planning applications. Therefore, the Department reflected on the CJEU decisions, which resulted in a change to the way forestry licence applications are assessed.
Prior to the decisions, mitigations could be included in the application. However, this is not now possible, which means many more applications are screened in for a comprehensive ecological assessment and approximately 80% of all forestry licences are now referred to our Ecology Unit. We now have 26 ecologists, whereas at the time of the CJEU decision we had one.
