Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent)
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417. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will provide an index of the submissions made to his Department with respect to the Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28074/20]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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My Department received almost 9,000 submissions during the recent public consultation on the Bill to amend the Agriculture Appeals Act, which is now the Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, 2020.

I am grateful to those who took the time to engage this Bill, which is hugely important in terms of increasing the efficiency of the forestry appeals system. All submissions were considered and we have published a report summarising the outcome of the process on my Department's website. The final Bill was updated with amendments which emanated from the consultation process.

A list of the submissions received has been published on the following link on my Department's website:

Individual submissions (the majority of which need to be redacted of personal information due to GDPR requirements) are also being uploaded to the website, but this will take time.  In the meantime, anyone interested in seeing a particular submission may request it  by quoting the reference number from the index and emailing ForestryBill2020@agriculture.gov.ie.