Minister of State with responsibility for land use and biodiversity, Pippa Hackett has confirmed that there is no target in place for the output of afforestation licences for the rest of the year.
A new licensing plan setting the targets for licence output for the remainder of 2023 and 2024 will be published “as soon as possible”, Minister Hackett told Agriland.
The level of applications for the afforestation and the native tree schemes will give an indication of the target for licence output, however, these are not yet quantified, she said.
Her comments come as the licence output by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) increased slightly over the last week with five afforestation licences issued.
These licences allow for afforestation of 98ha, the latest Forestry Licensing Dashboard from the DAFM up until the week ending on Friday, October 6, shows.
So far this year the DAFM has issued 18 afforestation licences which allow for 278ha of new plantings. An area of 1,440ha has been planted year to date.
Ireland remains far from reaching its own afforestation target of 8,000ha annually. An area of 833ha needs to be planted over the next months to reach last year’s total of 2,273ha.
Licence output
In the first week of October 2023, the DAFM also issued 37 Coillte felling licences, 14 private felling licences and six road licences, the latest dashboard shows.
A total of 164 road licences have been issued so far this year which allow for the construction of 61km of forest roads. To date this year 51km have been constructed.
The issuing of both afforestation and road licences has been significantly impacted this year as the DAFM awaited full and final EU approval for the Forestry Programme 2023-2027.
In terms of felling, however, a total of 1,190 private and 1,169 Coillte felling licences have been issued by the DAFM so far this year up until October 6.
Of all felling licences granted last week, six were issued for thinning while 45 licences were issued for clear felling, the forestry licensing dashboard shows.
The licences issued by the DAFM this year to date approve the felling of 27,625ha or 7,440,730m3, of which 634ha or 210,437m3 were approved last week.