'Negative' messaging 'undermining' forest sector
The Forestry Licensing Plan 2022 sets a target to issue 5,250 licences, which is a year-on-year increase of 30%.
“Consistent negative messaging” around forestry is “undermining” the sector, TDs and senators have been told by Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine Pippa Hackett.
The industry must work together to “change this narrative”, she told the Oireachtas joint committee on agriculture, food and the marine at a recent meeting.
Ms Hackett said that through the work of Project Woodland, “most of the issues” identified in the Mackinnon report are “being addressed and are at different stages of implementation”.
Ms Hackett said there were 21 recommendations made in the 2019 Mackinnon report and that "three or four" of these have been implemented — which she said was "movement".
"Many of those are not simply a matter of clicking one's fingers and it is done," she added.
Ms Hackett said overall that there has been “real and substantial progress” in improving the department's forestry licensing output.
In total, there were more than 4,000 licences issued last year, which is a 56% increase on 2020 levels.
However, Ms Hackett said she is “aware of the need” to continue at pace this year and, in particular, to “increase further the number of afforestation licences issued”.
At the beginning of this year, the department published the Forestry Licensing Plan for 2022, containing a target of 5,250 new licences to issue in 2022, which is a year-on-year increase of 30%.
She told the committee that at the time of the meeting, there were 3,860 licences in total on hand with the department, a “significant reduction” from that time last year when the figure was around 6,500.
“At this point, my department is on course to have no outstanding felling licences predating 2021 by end of the second quarter of this year,” Ms Hackett added.
She said that work is also continuing on the development of a new forestry strategy for Ireland.
“I know how important it is to the whole sector that we maintain momentum and continue to build on the progress made to date,” Ms Hackett said.
“I am confident that while we still have much work to do, we are taking the steps necessary to address the delays in licensing and eliminate the backlogs.”Â
She also told the committee that there is a need to encourage farmers and landowners to plant more trees.
“Forestry has a critical role to play in contributing positively to climate change mitigation, and to the improvement of biodiversity and water quality,” Ms Hackett added.
“It also has a central role to play in improving farm incomes as part of the agricultural enterprise, and in the development of the rural economy and job creation.”
In its submission to the Oireachtas, the Social, Economic, Environmental Forestry Association of Ireland (SEEFA) said that the forest industry is “currently considering a planned protest” outside Leinster House “for our right to plant trees, produce wood, and maintain rural jobs”.
“Policy decisions, a dysfunctional licensing system, and mismanagement at senior level have resulted in our once thriving private forestry sector going from planting 15,000 hectares per annum 20 years ago to 8,000 hectares 10 years ago, and reduced to just 2,000 hectares in 2021 — the lowest since 1946,” SEEFA chairman Teige Ryan said.
“If issues are to be addressed correctly, the department must accept the reasons for the decline, which are excessive delays in the licensing system; the shameful way landowners have been treated in relation to ash dieback; and the obvious incompatibility between afforestation and the Common Agricultural Policy."
He said that the forest service’s “inability to meet programme for government afforestation targets over the last six years” has resulted in “a failure to plant 21,500 hectares, which could have removed eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide from our atmosphere”.
Ms Hackett said officials in her department are working to "move towards systems that function and that not only deliver licences as quickly as possible and on time, but also meet the environmental requirements".
"We were, unfortunately, in breach of environmental regulations and it set us back," she said.
"It has taken us this amount of time to try to build back up from grinding to a halt, essentially, to putting in systems and processes that work and that deliver the licences we need."
