A review of Ireland’s forestry programme by the European Commission is “unlikely” to result in eased environmental conditions which have to be met for afforestation, an Oireachtas committee has heard.
The comments were made by the secretary general of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM), Brendan Gleeson who was speaking at meeting of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
Ireland is one of the few EU member states that provides grants for forestry. This requires EU state aid approval, with conditions set in relation to peat soils, high-nature farmland, breeding waders, hen harriers, and wetlands, Gleeson said.
For every application received by the DAFM, an environmental assessment needs to be conducted, he said. The DAFM receives between 12 and 14 applications for afforestation licences on average per week and processes about 10 per week.
Ireland’s Forestry Programme 2023-2027, which was approved in September last year, will be reviewed by the European Commission in 2025. However, Gleeson ruled out that this review will result in eased environmental requirements.
“The commission didn’t seek that review with a view to watering down the environmental requirements. If people are kind of waiting to see some delusion of these factors, that is not going to happen.
“I don’t want people to think that the review will allow us to go in and dilute these requirements, that’s really, really unlikely,” the secretary general of the DAFM told the TDs and Senators on the committee yesterday (Wednesday, May 8).
A full public consultation will be conducted by the DAFM as part of the review which will then be send to the commission, Gleeson said. Without having accepted the conditions imposed by the commission, Ireland would not have a forestry programme in place, he added.
All applications undergo an environment assessment procedure to ensure that proposed planting is compatible with the protection and enhancement of the environment, including, water, biodiversity, archaeology and landscape.
The cost of supplying any additional information, for example an environmental impact statement, a Natura impact statement, ecological or archaeological reports that are required by the Forest Service, must be borne by the applicant.
Afforestation
Since Ireland’s current forestry programme commenced in September last year, the DAFM has issued approvals for over 3,000ha of afforestation, according to figures provided by the director of forestry at the DAFM, Barry Delany.
Under the new programme, licence applications are subject to new requirements which make it “easier” for the DAFM to process applications, Delany said. Since January, the DAFM has received 294 applications of which 54 are approved.
The DAFM needs more applications to plant and is “committed” to turning around these applications within six and nine months, depending on whether an appropriate assessment is needed or not, according to the DAFM secretary general.
The DAFM’s latest Forestry Licensing Dashboard for the week ending on Friday, May 3, 2024, shows that a total area of 392ha has been planted so far this year, including 119ha last month.
So far this month, the DAFM approved the planting of 86ha, leading to a total of 1,291ha so far this year. This remains far from what is needed to achieve the planting target of 8,000ha annually under Ireland’s Climate Action Plan.
Commenting on the latest dashboard figures, the Social, Economic, Environmental Forestry Association of Ireland (SEEFA) said that the month of April “marked yet another underperforming month in Irish forestry”.
“Felling continues to be an issue with less than 1,600ha licensed in the month, failing to meet even the lacklustre 2023 levels,” SEEFA said. Figures show that just over 3,000ha were approved for felling during the same month last year.
“Moreover, the disparity between the number of afforestation licences issued and our annual planting targets is widening, with only 40% of the required 667ha licensed in April – the worst month this year.
“This year, 1,630 licence applications across afforestation, felling and roads have been submitted, yet only 1,161 have been granted. This gap needs to be addressed immediately,” the private forestry sector group said.