Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 29 March 2022
840. Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the reason that the Y axis of the number of licences issued for afforestation, roads, private felling and Coillte felling was reduced from 140 to 120 on the weekly dashboard; if he will reinstate it to 140; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15861/22]
View answerThe Department publishes the weekly dashboard at www.gov.ie/en/collection/15b56-forest-statistics-and-mapping/#forestry-weekly-dashboard. The aim of the dashboard is to give full transparency on the number of forestry licences, across afforestation, roads and felling (broken down between Coillte and private felling), we issue every week.
It also shows a useful comparison with the numbers issued in the previous year by month, and the hectares, and kilometres that represents. Furthermore it contains statistics on licences issued year-to-date for forestry support schemes, such the Reconstitution and Underplanting Scheme (Ash Dieback).
In the interests of transparency, we include a side by side comparison for the current month and the previous one, with weekly output shown as a bar chart, colour-coded for the different licence types. These bar charts are automatically generated and will default to an appropriate value on the Y axis, unless altered manually The Y axis generated in January, in line with output was 140, and to compare like with like this was the value maintained for February, when both were represented side by side. Likewise February and March have a Y axis of 120 to reflect output in February. Our objective at all times is give easily understandable and comparable data and that is the reason for this change.
Along with Minister of State Pippa Hackett, who has overall responsibility for the sector, my priority this year is to deliver on the ambition outlined in the Licensing Plan and to issue 5,250 licences and the dashboard affords full transparency in monitoring our progress towards this target.
