Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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Afforestation applications received by my Department are reviewed for completeness to ensure they are a valid application which can be progressed to licence decision stage. The licensing process involves careful assessment of applications from a silvicultural, environmental and scheme compliance perspective.

Statistics of all licences issued are published weekly on my Departments Forestry Dashboard, which can be found here: gov - 2024 Forestry Weekly Dashboard (www.gov.ie)

To date in 2024 we have received 71 valid afforestation applications with 81 approvals issuing in the same period.

There are 2,398ha in total, currently available for planting under the Afforestation Scheme. This is made up of approvals issued to new applicants since the Programme opened and those who applied or were approved under the old Programme, who have now opted-in to the new Programme.

Since 2020 there has been a significant turnaround in the number of licences issued by my Department. For the new Forestry Programme we are committed to reducing turn around times for all schemes to six months for screened out files and nine months for files that are screened in for appropriate assessment.