The Social, Economic, Environmental Forestry Association (SEEFA) has urged the Minister for Agriculture to “give the industry some confidence” and issue a licencing plan for 2024.
SEEFA has called on Minister Charlie McConalogue to issue a licencing plan for next year because, it said after five months into 2023, there is still no licencing plan in place for this year.
“Another week passes with targets missed, there is little doubt that the licencing scandal will enter a sixth year in 2024,” it said.
It said Minister McConalogue’s repeated assertions that he and and his department are working hard “is not a solution” and described this as a “fudge”.
Forestry dashboard – week three
Meanwhile the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has released the latest forestry licencing data.
To date this month, licenses have been issued for 19/ha of afforestation, compared to zero for the past two months.
The current total for 2023 afforestation sits at 106/ha, which is considerably lower than the end of year goal of 8000/ha.
Although it’s only week three into road licences being issued, DAFM is currently down 4km on last months number. In May at total of 3km of road licences have been issued.
This year, to date, DAFM has received 1,371 applications for licences and confirmed that it has issued 1,278 licences.
Out of the 1,371 licence applications to date received 51 are for afforestation, 1,119 are for felling and 201 are specifically for roads.
Six afforestation licences, 1,229 felling and 43 road licences comprise the total for the 1,278 licences issued todate.
SEEFA
However SEEFA has described the figures outlined in week three of the Forestry Dashboard as “debilitating”.
“We find ourselves at a loss of what more we can do to speed up the process and get the sector back up and running,” the industry group said.