Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 20 September 2022
588. Deputy Paul Kehoe asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the cost for the ecological input into each file processed through the ecology unit of the Forest Service of his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45556/22]
View answerSince the middle of 2019, ecologists have been required to play a significantly larger role in licensing than previously was the case. This is as a result of the Departments implementation of the findings of CJEU and High Court cases in relation to how projects are required to be processed.
By 2021, the Department had increased significantly the ecology resources. By the end of last year, over 4,050 licence approvals in addition to a small number of non-licence scheme approvals had been processed during the year most of which required ecology input. Ecologists are involved in many different roles but are mostly dealing with licence and scheme approvals.
While there is a wide variation in the effort required for each file it is estimated that the average ecology cost per file for ecology input is around €650 to €700 euros in 2021.
So far this year there is an overall significant increase on all licensing categories year to date compared with last year. (2021 average 78 licences per week, 2022 so far 92 licences per week)
At the start of the year we set a target of 5,250 licences for 2022. Currently, judging by the year to date figures we are set to hit about 92% of that overall target.
In the last 12 months from Sept 2021, DAFM have delivered 5,100 licences
In terms of felling, between what was licensed last year and this year there is a very large supply of timber available to be felled. It has also been a very good year for forest road licensing.
The quality of the information supplied for felling and roading is very good, generally with good quality harvest plans and road specifications.
Afforestation figures are 64% of year to date target. However July and August and to date in September have shown significant signs of improvement as a result of the new contract ecologists starting to issue licences. We are embarking on an intensive effort over the last few weeks and next few weeks to prioritise afforestation with an aim of clearing all older files by year end ahead of the new forestry programme.
Year to date, an average of only 8 afforestation applications (291 total) have been received per week compared with an average of 13 licensed approvals per week (474 total). As we get through the last few hundred older files on hand, we will increasingly be relying on a significant increase of new files to drive the output of licences.
