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Departmental Staff

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 14 July 2020

Tuesday, 14 July 2020

Ceisteanna (845)

Patrick Costello

Ceist:

845. Deputy Patrick Costello asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the estimated amount it would cost in 2021 if nine additional full-time ecologists were recruited for his Department. [15966/20]

Amharc ar fhreagra

Freagraí scríofa

My Department is the consent authority for forestry licences. As you may be aware, changes have been made to internal Appropriate Assessment Procedures (AAP) in relation to these decisions. These were introduced in response to important Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) decisions and their subsequent interpretation by the Forestry Appeals Committee (FAC) and others. These findings meant that in order to grant licences which fully meet environmental requirements, fundamental changes to the licensing system were unavoidable and assessment now requires significant ecological input.

In order to deliver on these new requirements, my Department has and is recruiting additional resources including ecologists, as follows:

- Three new permanent ecologists have joined the Department ecology team, with three more to be appointed shortly.

- We have also engaged external ecological expertise to help with the backlog of files. Four local ecologists have also been contracted provide extra support. Further, an ecology contract with five new ecologists has been started.

A project plan is now in place for dealing with licence applications and aims to make best use of these resources in order to increase the number of licences issued. We are keeping resources under continuous review to ensure that they are sufficient to deliver the plan.

In terms of the cost of estimated cost of additional full-time ecologists, the first point of the pay scale for ecologists recruited to the Department, including the 2% increase due in October 2020, is €34,651. To employ 9 ecologists for one year based on current salary levels is €311,000.

This figure only represents the cost for the year 2021 and would obviously rise incrementally in subsequent years if the recruited ecologists were to be retained.

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