Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 4 October 2022
739. Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of licences per scheme type which were applied for before 1 January 2021 that remain to be processed by his Department in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [47886/22]
View answerTo date in 2022, there is an overall significant increase on all licensing categories compared with last year. Up to 30th September, 2022 3,629 licences have issued.
July, August and September have shown significant signs of improvement in afforestation licensing and we intend to maintain this momentum.
There are currently 516 licences remaining to be processed of the 1,683 licences predating 2021 that were on hand at the start of 2022. In many of these cases, further information was required from the applicant. We are embarking on an intensive effort to prioritise clearing older files ahead of the new forestry programme.
|
Licences |
|
|
Afforestation |
169 |
|
Forest Road |
68 |
|
Felling |
279 |
|
Total |
516 |
In the interest of full transparency details of all licences issued by category are available on the weekly dashboard. This is published on the Departmental website and is made available to all interested parties as well as being submitted to the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine each week.
The Department's forestry dashboard is available here: gov.ie - Forest Statistics and Mapping (www.gov.ie).
