Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. Ireland has a forestry industry that provides approximately 12,000 badly needed jobs throughout the country, particular in rural areas, including my county, Tipperary. It contributes some €2.3 billion to the economy annually and plays a major role in combating climate change. The importance of the forestry industry is underscored in the programme for Government, which outlines that trees and forests store carbon, clean the air, mitigate water movements, prevent soil erosion, provide habitats for flora and fauna and provide an attractive amenity for the public.

This is all being threatened, however. Tree planting has ground to a halt and our sawmills are running out of timber. This has been caused by the introduction of a new regime for forestry licensing and a failure for this new process to provide the licences that are needed to plant new trees and fell them. This is an issue which has been debated at length in the House and the Dáil and in various committee meetings. Furthermore, the problem has been exacerbated by the additional backlog of projects under appeal with the Forestry Appeals Committee. Despite the passage of emergency legislation only a few months ago, namely, the Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, the crisis has persisted and the reforms that were to flow from the legislation have not yet materialised.

Forestry is now in the midst of a full-scale crisis that threatens the future of the industry. Industry representatives have been clear in stating that forestry is on its knees due to the prolonged and ongoing inaction of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Despite the coming into force of the recent Act, the crisis has worsened and urgent intervention is needed to save jobs and salvage what is a vital industry.The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has repeatedly failed to deliver on the commitments to produce the required number of forestry licences. It has not met any of its targets and has repeatedly refused to admit that its process is not delivering.

Last week, it was reported in the Irish Independentthat a staggering 4,600 licence applications are backlogged in the forestry service. This was despite that fact the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has consistently stated that approximately only 2,000 forestry licences were backlogged. As reported in The Irish Times, the representative body for the industry in Ireland, Forestry Industries Ireland, has written to the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and leader of Fine Gael, and the leader of the Green Party outlining that the forestry industry in Ireland is in full-scale crisis, and asked them to intervene directly to save the industry.

Given that the Department has failed to get on top of the situation, the industry has called for three steps, all of which were included in the letter sent to the three party leaders. The first step is to place the forestry division of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine on an emergency footing, redeploy personnel to deal with the crisis and recruit and outsource additional managers and personnel immediately to deal with the backlog of licences. The second step is to set out specific targets for licensing, and hold the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to account by closely monitoring output through a temporary emergency oversight unit based in the Department of the Taoiseach. The third step is to insist the forestry appeals committee reforms its approach and increases its output, as enabled by the Forestry Act.

I have four questions for the Minister. Is the current number of backlog licences 2,000 or 4,600? If it is 4,600, how did the Minister and Department officials previously conclude the number of backlogs were 2,000 and state it repeatedly in Dáil debates? Can the Minister outline when the backlog was cleared, with reference to a specific date and timeline? Will the Minister specifically address the three steps identified by the industry to resolve the crisis?