Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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481. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if the forestry dashboard provided to members of the Houses of the Oireachtas will be updated to include applications received and the status of the applications in order to provide a complete overview of the existing backlog within the forestry licensing process; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42667/20]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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My Department receives forestry licence applications and issues decisions every week of the year. This means there is a constant turnover of applications at various stages of processing.  Licensing output is updated to stakeholders, including the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and the Marine, through a dashboard. The purpose of the dashboard is to summarise the main outputs for the week in a user-friendly format.

The dashboard includes information on:

- the number of licences issued on a weekly and monthly basis, including those with ecology input. 

- the hectares, kilometres and the volume of licences issued for afforestation, forest roads and felling. 

- the hectares planted and the kilometres of road constructed.

- the number of licences appealed as well as capital spending on the Forestry Programme to date.  7

- Comparisons with the previous year are also provided.

My Department also publishes comprehensive data on forestry applications received, licences issued and related matters on the Government’s website, gov.ie.  Details of all forestry licence applications received and decisions issued are published three times weekly on the forestry page of the gov.ie  following the link to public consultation.  This page also provides a link to the Forestry Division Monthly Reports, which give a detailed account of applications received and other outputs of Forestry schemes and licensing.  As outlined previously, there are currently 4,700 applications on hand for processing which are at various stages of progressing through the system. It would not be possible to update on this level of detail in a dashboard format.

My Department launched phase one of the Forestry Licence Viewer (FLV) on 1st December, 2020.  The FLV provides the user with information on forestry licences, indicating the status of the application, for example, received, in progress, under appeal or decided.  The next phase, which I expect to be launched shortly, will show application and supporting documentation for applications received from the go-live date.