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Up 3,000 felling licences are waiting to be approved by the Department of Agriculture.
The sector has suffered a horrific year of delays in 2020 due to serial appeals, with some forestry companies forced to consider shortening their working week to save staff costs or importing timber from other countries to keep mills running.
In response to a parliamentary question from Seán Sherlock TD, Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue said that there were 1,000 Coillte felling licences, 1,000 private licences that required some ecology input and a remaining 1,000 private licences at various stages of processing.
Continuous review
“Our overall approach to tackling this is subject to continuous improvement and review, with the aim of increasing the output of these licences on a weekly basis and there are 38 forestry inspectors, 16 ecologists and 11 administrative staff involved,” the minister said.
“By way of context, in terms of output, the total volume of felling licences issued for 2020 was just over 5 million cubic metres, of which just under 2m cubic metres issued since the introduction of the new forestry legislation in mid-October. I am confident this positive trend will continue into 2021.”
However, last year, the Government missed the forestry planting target of 8,000ha/year and there are fears that delays across the forestry sector will result in another missed target in 2021 at a time when the use of forestry in the fight against climate change is seen as crucial.
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