Seán Sherlock
Question:23. Deputy Sean Sherlock asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the reason for the disparity in Coillte tree felling licences each week versus the afforestation industry. [60841/21]
View answerThursday, 9 December 2021
Questions (23)
Written answers
Along with Minister of State Pippa Hackett, who has overall responsibility for the sector, it is my aim to deliver a licensing system which meets the needs of all those who apply for forestry licences.
This is regardless of whether that application comes from a farmer in Co. Galway who wishes to plant trees, a forest owner in Co. Wicklow who wishes to fell their crop or Coillte, who wishes to supply sawmills with product from their estate. Each licence has a value particularly to the rural economy where the timber is harvested, transported and processed.
This is what I am working towards and is the reason I set up Project Woodland earlier this year to resolve our licensing difficulties.
That is why we have also invested heavily in additional resources and in process improvements, alongside Project Woodland, to increase licence output. This has had the desired effect with a marked increase in licences issued in recent months. In fact, we are now well on the way to reaching our target of 4,000 licences this year, with 3,718 issued up to last Friday.
Much of that output has been felling licences, which reflects the number of felling licence applications we receive as opposed to forest roads and afforestation licence applications. To the end November this year, we received 3,445 tree felling licence applications, split between 2,294 Coillte and 1,151 private applications.
My Department has issued 1,229 private felling licences and 1,406 to Coillte. This highlights that overall there is no great disparity this year between both Coillte and private licences.
This means that the greater output for Coillte reflects the number of felling licences lodged by them. They of course are responsible for the mature national forest estate and represent 75% of national supply of logs to sawmills.
Afforestation licensing is not moving at the pace any of us would like to see and is now our main focus. Afforestation licences by their nature are more complex to assess and approve and we have dedicated 10 ecologists now solely to afforestation licensing. This allied to better systems process being implemented will give us a higher level of output than before.
Overall, I believe that recent gains in output shows that we are moving in the right direction. It is my intention to build on this momentum in 2022, and I am hopeful that further improvements can be made on foot of the system analysis and regulatory review being carried out under Project Woodland.