Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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472. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the action his Department is taking to remedy the situation in which a person who has forestry land and the Forestry Service has refused to grant them a forest road licence in circumstances (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21134/23]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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In the case provided, the application for a road licence has not been refused by my Department. However, a Further Information Request (FIR) has been issued by my Department to the applicants, requesting information on alternative access to their forest holding in the interest of water quality. Having considered the proposed new forest access route and the requirement to provide crossing points at two streams within the catchment of a public water supply and sensitive salmon spawning catchment, the applicants were requested to investigate alternative access routes from neighbouring forest lands. The application is being held open to afford the applicant sufficient time to investigate alternative routes, that may have less of an environmental risk associated.

If the applicant wishes to discuss the issues directly with my Department staff with a view to reaching a solution on the ground to safely harvest and remove the timber in an environmentally responsible manner, my staff would be open to such a discussion.

Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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473. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the measures his Department is taking to assist forestry owners who now find themselves in the position where they have been granted a felling licence but are having issues being granted a forest road licence as a result of changes to environmental policies, in particular with regard to watercourses; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21135/23]

Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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474. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the action his Department is taking to ensure that forestry owners who have made financial investments in forestry will not encounter issues in future with regards to the issuing of forestry roads licences, in view of changes to environmental policy; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21136/23]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 473 and 474 together.

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has provided guidance documents on the construction of forest roads. These include the Forest Road Manual (2006), Technical Standard for Design of Forest Entrances onto Public road (2019), Forest Entrance – Requirement for Mandatory Consultation (2020) and Forest Road Entrance Checklist (2022).

Additional engineers have been recruited by my Department to assist in ensuring a streamlined process to allow forest road applications to be processed as quickly as possible through the system in accordance with the various environmental and safety standards. Additional training to the sector will be provided when the Forestry Programme is launched.

The Department issued 718 forest road licences (amounting to 290 kilometres of forest road) during 2022. This is well in excess of the number of applications received and represents the highest number of road licences issued by the Department in a single year.

All licences applications whether felling or forest road applications must be considered in relation to the surrounding environment and will go through a process to ensure compliance with a range of environmental legislation that is in place to safeguard water quality, habitats and species.

A road application will go through an environmental protection process in instances where a felling licence has already issued for that area. This is because the road construction project is a different project to the felling. It is open to the applicant to apply for both projects at the same time.