Legislation that restores the single consent authority for forest road licences with the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine is “welcome”, according to the Irish Farmers’ Association’s (IFA’s) farm forestry chairperson, Vincent Nally.
“This is a hugely important development for the sector that must significantly reduce costs and streamline the approval process,” he said.
Nally stressed that the requirements on forest owners were still “very onerous” and “didn’t seem to consider the scale of the operation”.
The measure of the success of the single consent system will be a reduction in construction costs for forest owners. It has to make it easier to build a forest road and realise the value of the crop of timber.
He said that the sector has been “plagued” by rising costs and increasing red tape in recent times, where forest owners are seeing their profits “eaten up with mounting requirements and an excessive reliance on external expertise by the department”.
I will be watching the implementation of the new single consent system very closely.
Continuing, the IFA’s farm forestry chair said the single consent “provides a real opportunity for the department to increase efficiency and introduce a workable system that recognises the limitations of small farm forests”.
According to section 8 of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2018, “provision for the department to act as the single consent authority for forest road licences, where the forest road provides access to a public road or where there is a widening of an existing entrance”.
It also notes that forest roads that provide access to a national road “will still require planning permission from the relevant roads authority”.