Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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908. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will provide an update on the State’s State aid application with regard to forestry; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7349/23]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy may be aware that the Government has recently secured funding of €1.3 billion for the Forestry Programme 2023-2027. Subject to State Aid approval, this will support the biggest and best-funded Forestry Programme to date in Ireland. This funding provides unprecedented incentives to encourage the planting of trees that can provide a valuable addition to farm income and also to help meet our national climate and biodiversity objectives.

Currently, the Forestry Programme 2023-2027 is subject to an ongoing Strategic Environmental Assessment/Appropriate Assessment (SEA/AA) process. Within this process, the draft Forest Strategy Implementation plan, containing the Forestry Programme was published on 18th October 2022 for a six-week period of public consultation. My Department is currently collating and integrating feedback from more than 150 submissions on the Forest Strategy Implementation Plan. The Forestry Programme 2023-2027 also requires State Aid to implement and the SEA/AA process is a critical step in the process of securing State Aid approval from the Commission.

The previous State Aid Guidelines in the agricultural and forestry sectors and in rural areas expired on 31 December 2022 and have now been replaced with a revised version as of 1st January 2023.The introduction of these revised guidelines meant that a formal application for State Aid could not have been submitted to the European Commission until the revised guidelines were in place, i.e. before January 2023. Cognisant of the importance of implementing the new Forestry Programme as early as possible in 2023, and of the constraint that we could not submit a formal application for State Aid in 2022, the Department secured the agreement of the European Commission to facilitate a pre-notification in November 2022.

The Department is currently actively engaging with the Commission, and working intensively towards submitting the formal application with a view to secure full State Aid approval for the Programme as soon as possible.