Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 7 December 2021
660. Deputy Matt Shanahan asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the metric by which forest road licence applications are conjoined with or take account of felling or afforestation licenses pending given neither activity can be undertaken without a forest road licence to access the timber or the planting site; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [60013/21]
View answerForest road application licences are not received in relation to afforestation. Typically existing farm tracks and entrances are used to provide access for machinery involved in site development for tree planting.
Thinning and felling operations typically require forest road licences in order to create access for the relevant machinery and also to enable wood mobilization.
Tree felling and forest road works licence applications are received daily by my Department and issued as the assessment of each application is completed. It may happen that an application for a tree felling licence, which may be submitted by a landowner, is received at a different time to an associated forest road licence, which must be submitted by a Registered Forester.
In addition to this, there is a different suite of documentation required to support each application. A forest road works licence application will contain technical information related to the construction of the road.
Proposed forest roads that open out onto a public road will also require extra documentation, as the health and safety of other road users must be considered, under the single consent forest road system.
Where both applications are submitted at the same they will be considered concurrently. I am pleased that forest road licencing is progressing very well this year and we are on track to more than double the targeted output of 125km set in the Climate Action Plan.
