Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 22 February 2022
918. Deputy Sorca Clarke asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of full-time forestry inspectors and full-time ecologists recruited by his Department in 2020, 2021 and to date in 2022, in tabular form. [10076/22]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe number of full time, permanent Forestry Inspectors and ecologists that were recruited by the Department for forestry licensing since 2020 are set out below. Note: not all work directly on forestry licencing as my Department has a range of forestry functions.
|
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
|
|
Forestry Inspectors |
6 |
3 |
0 |
|
Ecologists |
6 |
1 |
0 |
In addition, the Department uses temporary forestry inspectors and contract ecologists for forestry licensing. We currently have 27 full-time equivalent ecologists working on forestry in the Department.
We issued 4,050 licences in 2021, an increase of 56% on 2020. I have allocated additional resources to deal with the backlog, and this increase in output is reflective of the additional resources we have put in place. We are keeping resource requirements under continuous review and further ecologists and forestry inspectors are being recruited. Alongside this, we have introduced new processes which have led to more efficient processing.
