Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 20 October 2021
293. Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if applications submitted to the Forest Service are dealt with sequentially going by the TFL number allocated to each individual application; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51399/21]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe Department assesses all forestry licence and scheme applications on their own merits and in combination with other plans and projects in the area. The Deputy is aware of the backlog of forestry licences awaiting assessment and that the majority of these are referred to ecology.
Circular 08/2021 published last June, set out the work the Department had conducted to streamline the licence assessment process. The Circular detailed the improvements had been made to the system, to optimise the ecologists’ time to concentrate on the ecological aspects of each application. At the time of the Circular, the improvements that had been applied to private tree felling licence (TFL) applications with ecologists working mostly on these files in advance of the system being developed further to assist with forest road works and afforestation licence applications.
In relation to the tree felling licence applications on hand, the Department undertook a triage exercise to determine the quality of the supporting documentation submitted. Resulting from this, a cohort of applications were deemed to be complete enough to enable the ecological assessment. The remaining cases were communicated to the applicants or their registered foresters, detailing the issues involved.
Since then, the Department has been working through those complete applications and those for which the requested information has been received. Ecologists are assigned applications on a county basis and within those they prioritise, taking the older applications first. It may also be the case that two or more applications proximate to each other are assessed together, regardless of when they were received to ensure consistency.
I am pleased to report that this has been a very successful exercise and that we are now issuing an average of 115 new licences per week since the beginning of September.
