Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 9 May 2023
473. Deputy Colm Burke asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the measures his Department is taking to assist forestry owners who now find themselves in the position where they have been granted a felling licence but are having issues being granted a forest road licence as a result of changes to environmental policies, in particular with regard to watercourses; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21135/23]
View answer474. Deputy Colm Burke asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the action his Department is taking to ensure that forestry owners who have made financial investments in forestry will not encounter issues in future with regards to the issuing of forestry roads licences, in view of changes to environmental policy; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21136/23]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 473 and 474 together.
The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has provided guidance documents on the construction of forest roads. These include the Forest Road Manual (2006), Technical Standard for Design of Forest Entrances onto Public road (2019), Forest Entrance – Requirement for Mandatory Consultation (2020) and Forest Road Entrance Checklist (2022).
Additional engineers have been recruited by my Department to assist in ensuring a streamlined process to allow forest road applications to be processed as quickly as possible through the system in accordance with the various environmental and safety standards. Additional training to the sector will be provided when the Forestry Programme is launched.
The Department issued 718 forest road licences (amounting to 290 kilometres of forest road) during 2022. This is well in excess of the number of applications received and represents the highest number of road licences issued by the Department in a single year.
All licences applications whether felling or forest road applications must be considered in relation to the surrounding environment and will go through a process to ensure compliance with a range of environmental legislation that is in place to safeguard water quality, habitats and species.
A road application will go through an environmental protection process in instances where a felling licence has already issued for that area. This is because the road construction project is a different project to the felling. It is open to the applicant to apply for both projects at the same time.
