163 planting licences issued since new Forestry Programme

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has issued a total of 163 planting licences since the new Forestry Programme 2023-2027 commenced.

Six afforestation licences were issued last week which allow for 44ha of new plantings, the Forestry Licensing Dashboard for the week ending on Friday, March 1, shows.

This leads to a total of 87 planting licences issued by the DAFM so far this year, allowing for 710ha of new plantings. An area of 153ha has been afforested to date in 2024.

While the new Forestry Programme 2023-2027 worth €1.3 billion was announced in November 2022, due to a delay in EU State Aid approval, it was only approved by Cabinet in September 2023.

Forestry licences

So far this year, the DAFM issued 213 private felling licences, 192 Coillte felling licences and 172 road licences, for which the number of applications received was 157, 0, and 121 respectively.

Of this total, the DAFM issued 22 licences for new forest roads, 25 private felling licences and 14 Coillte felling licences last week.

The Social, Economic Environmental Forestry Association of Ireland (SEEFA) said that February 2024 was “another poor month” with less than half of the afforestation target met.

In order to achieve the government’s annual planting target of 8,000ha set under the Climate Action Plan, the DAFM would need to issues licences for 667ha per month.

The dashboard shows that licences for 326ha of plantings were issued last month. While this is far below the monthly output required, in February 2023 this figure stood at 39ha.

Schemes

Earlier this week, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue outlined the amounts and number of payees per county under forestry schemes in 2023.

These payments include grants and premiums under the afforestation schemes and grants under the support schemes.

It also includes payments made under the interim schemes for afforestation, forest roads and reconstitution of ash dieback introduced in 2023 prior to the new Forestry Programme.