The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) issued afforestation licences for just 47ha in January.
According to the Forestry Licensing Dashboard, published by the department, this figure is down 90% on January 2022 when licences were granted to plant trees on 482ha.
In January 2021, the department issued afforestation licences for 353ha.
The dashboard shows that no afforestation licences were issued in the first three weeks of 2023, while no licences have been granted yet in February.
During 2022, the department issued licences to plant trees on 4,972ha; an increase of 726ha on the previous year.
The data shows that 66ha were planted with trees in January 2023, which is down slightly on the corresponding figure in 2022 of 69ha.
However, both figures fall far short of January 2021 when 181ha was planted.
In total, 2,273ha of land was planted last year, up from 2,016ha in 2021.
In January, the department issued licences for felling on 2,405ha, which is down from 3,507ha in the same month in 2022.
Licences were issued for 3km of forestry roads, compared to 29km in January 2022.
The dashboard shows there has been no afforestation applications received by the department to date this year, 81 felling applications have been made, while there have been 13 roads applications.
Two afforestation licences have been granted by DAFM to date in 2023, along with 289 felling licences and 10 roads licences.
Commenting on the figures, independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice claimed that “farmers have lost confidence in the forestry sector”.
The Roscommon–Galway representative said that Minister of State with responsibility for forestry, Pippa Hackett, “needs to look at what she is doing”.
“The whole thing is in chaos and the minister is still trying to defend it, which is unbelievable.”
Fitzmaurice told Agriland that the government is “banking” on licences that were previously granted over the past three years to boost tree-planting numbers.
However, the TD said that those farmers who had been granted licences had already been waiting for up to four years and many have now “moved on” and “forgotten about planting”.