Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Would the Taoiseach give positive consideration to moving all matters relating to forestry applications to the realm of planning and development, thereby treating forestry as a land use? This would allow local authorities to deal with applications within an eight-week window no different from any other form of development or land use in Ireland. At the moment, the delays in forestry are injurious to the economy. They are slowing down development. Bringing it into land use would be a very streamlined way of dealing with this. It would also be far less contentious than data centres, wind turbines and all the other issues that come before planning authorities.

They have the competency to deal with this. It could be transformative if we made that change.

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