Written answers

Tuesday, 21 September 2021

Photo of Michael LowryMichael Lowry (Tipperary, Independent)
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679. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the date on which files (details supplied) were received by the Forest Service of his Department in tabular form; the reason the files were not returned to the applicants if not up to the standard at the time of receipt of the application by his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44521/21]

Photo of Charlie McConalogueCharlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The information provided to the Oireachtas Committee referred to when, earlier this year, the Department undertook a full triage exercise of all felling applications currently on hand and referred to our Ecology Unit.

The purpose was to assess whether the application had all of the necessary information for it to proceed to an ecological assessment. The main criterion here was submission of a good quality harvest plan.

In 50% of the files reviewed, the harvest plan was deemed to be of sufficient quality and therefore proceeded. This has been the basis for the very high number of felling files issued to private applicants recently.

Where the harvest plan was found to have gaps or where no harvest plan was submitted these were returned to the registered forester (or forest owner where there was no registered forester) with individual feedback on how this could be rectified. I am pleased to report that some of these are now being returned to the Department and are being worked on and I would urge any foresters or applicants with outstanding requests for information to return them as soon as possible.

The above exercise is now a permanent feature of our approach to processing felling files and will lead to better processing of such files. This was communicated in a circular to the registered foresters in June.

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