Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 11 May 2023
245. Deputy Claire Kerrane asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will confirm that the backlog in felling licences is now dealt with; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22298/23]
View answerThe Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has delivered considerable reductions in the backlog of all forestry licences as well as reductions in the time taken to process newer files and last year we had another significant year-on-year increase in the number of licences issued.
The overall backlog of licences on hand over four months reduced from 6,000 applications in August 2021, to 3,700 applications at the start of 2022 to 1,764 to 5th May. The progress in reducing the backlog is expected to continue through 2023.
My Department continues to issue and accept felling licence applications and has to date this year issued 1,066 felling licences. In 2022, we issued 817 more felling licences than felling applications received. Furthermore, last year we issued record levels of felling licences at 3,293 for 9.6 million cubic metres of wood, or 46,027 Hectares. These licences have up to 10 year timelines and are being used by forest owners providing work for forestry contractors and supplying sawmills.
As of 5th May 2023, there were a total of 2,144 felling licence applications on hand, with 1,091 of these on hand over 120 days. Average turnaround times are falling overall and this is most evident in files received post-2021. My Department is actively working with applicants to finalise any outstanding information required to allow decisions to be made on their applications.
For those applications for which other issues arise, my Department has a programme in place to contact applicants, to allow decisions to be made whether to continue to process the application or to close them out.
Both Minister of State Pippa Hackett, who has overall responsibility for the sector, and I are fully committed to delivering a licensing system which will meets the needs of the sector and of society and recent licensing trends for felling applications demonstrate the progress made towards achieving this. The issues that led to the felling licence backlog have largely been resolved and the bulk of those older files with us are due to issues not related to a lack of resources within my Depart
