Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 20 April 2023
99. Deputy Matt Carthy asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of hectares of new afforestation that has been planted to date in 2023; and the estimated afforestation rates for the full year. [18548/23]
View answerWe have been working intensively and proactively with the European Commission to secure State Aid approval for the new Programme for the period 2023 to 2027.
I am pleased to say that we have commenced our formal submission for State Aid approval and I expect that it will be fully lodged by the end of this week.
This clears the way for the Commission to formally assess our application and to make a determination on our request for State Aid approval. Once that has been received we will be in a position to launch the new Programme, subject to the completion of the Strategic Environmental Assessment which is linked to the State Aid approval.
As regards estimated afforestation rates for the full year, the Deputy will be aware that forestry is a demand led scheme and predicting uptake in any given year is difficult to do.
I am confident, however that the very attractive nature of both the interim scheme and the proposed scheme under the new programme will appeal to landowners.
The interim Afforestation Scheme was launched in late 2022 to provide an option of immediate planting from January 2023 for those with existing valid approvals, and that this planting will be paid at significantly increased grant and premium rates.
I am pleased to say that 248 applications have been approved under this Scheme for 1,533 hectares. Of these 1,533 hectares, almost 600 hectares of planting has already been completed, and planting has commenced on a further area of more than 500 hectares. In addition we have this year paid for the planting of 205 hectares carried out under the Forestry Programme 2014 - 2022.
At the December 31st, 2022 there were approximately 7,000 hectares of approved forests where work had not commenced. I have said that 1,533 hectares of this have opted into the interim scheme. The remaining 5,500 hectares can still apply to opt into the new Programme and may be encouraged to do so to avail of the increased rates.
There are also applications currently being processed at approval stage which will also transition into the new Programme.
