Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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394. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his plans to provide support to the forest industry to ensure its survival through the ongoing forestry licensing crisis in order for it to deliver on the vision which is being created for Irish forestry for the next 100 years of the industry; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [47386/21]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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Through the Afforestation Grant and Premium Scheme, the Department provides generous establishment grants and annual premiums to those who wish to afforest their land.  The Afforestation Grant and Premium Scheme forms part of the national Forestry Programme 2014 -2020 (extended to end 2022), is 100% exchequer funded and represents State investment in the forestry sector of some €482m over its lifetime.  

Applications for the Afforestation Scheme must be submitted by a Registered Forester, who is a suitably qualified industry professional.  Establishment grants paid under the Scheme cover 100% of the cost of establishing a forest. The scheme also pays an annual premium to the landowner of up to €680 per hectare payable each year for 15 years.  I am advised that at present, there is 5,700ha with approval to plant forestry, and I would encourage anyone with a valid approval to contact their Registered Forester to arrange planting.

In respect of forestry licensing in general, the Department has significantly increased resources with  ecologist numbers gone from one in 2018 to 27 currently and 21 additional forestry inspectors have been deployed. 

Licensing outputs have increased again in September, with over 500 licences issued (to 24th), the highest in any month this year.  We have now issued more licences year to date than the whole of 2020. We are not there yet but we are making significant progress.  The Department is currently examining every afforestation application in the system and has deployed 10 ecologists to deal specifically with afforestation.

The Department will shortly announce the successful bidder for the recent tendering process to engage external expertise to carry out an end-to-end regulatory and process review, which has been sought by the Project Woodland working groups.  This is in addition to the systems analyst already in place.  In the meantime, the Department is working with forestry companies to improve the quality of information provided with licence applications.  This has already yielded results for felling licences.  The same exercise has been completed for forest roads and will shortly be carried out on afforestation licence applications.