Last week (Thursday, February 25), the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine revealed ‘Project Woodland’ – a new strategy to address the issues in the forestry sector.
The initiative comes on the back of a report by Jo O’Hara, a private consultant who was formally a British forestry commissioner; the chief forester for Scotland; and the chief executive of Scottish Forestry.
Her report was commissioned by the department in the hope that it would suggest ways to implement the recommendations of an earlier report – the Mackinnon Report – into the various challenges the sector faces.
These workstreams are: addressing the current backlog in licence applications; improving the licencing process; developing the organisation in the department that deals with forestry; and developing a “shared national approach”.
So what exactly do these workstreams aim to do?
Workstream 1: Reducing the backlogs
This workstream caters for a single recommendation in the original Mackinnon Report, and covers all licences – roads, afforestation and felling.
The objectives of this workstream is to reduce the current backlogs of all types of licence in breach of agreed processing times to an acceptable level, whilst ensuring that regulatory standards are maintained; and to ensure that any future growth of a backlog is identified and managed.
The key actions outlined in order to achieve this in Jo O’Hara’s new report are:
- Clarifying the definition of ‘backlog’ to ensure it includes all licencing activity and only refers to applications beyond the customer charter standard for approval;
- Specifying a target number for each type of licence and an acceptable scale of backlog. There should also be transparency about the prioritisation of applications;
- Addressing the differences in performance of department teams to maximise efficiency and ensure resources are properly applied;
- Improving communication between department staff and stakeholders to explain the basis for the calculation of the backlog.
Workstream 2: Shared national approach
This workstream accounts for nine recommendations from the MacKinnon Report. The O’Hara Report groups them together as they are all aimed at raising the profile of forestry and encouraging development in the sector as a whole.
The objectives of this workstream, as set out in the O’Hara Report, are to “establish a cross-society vision” for the role of forestry, aligning the actions of public organisations to that purpose; and establishing an assessment of the suitability and availability of land for different types of forestry.
To achieve all this, the O’Hara report suggests the following:
- Develop a forestry strategy underpinned by evidence and supported by an increased promotion of the Irish Forest Standard, Code of Best Practice and associated environmental guidelines. This should feed into the Land Use Strategy, and the prioritisation of forestry in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP);
- A much clearer explanation of the roles and responsibilities of the department (including the Forest Service), Coillte, Teagasc and COFORD [Council for Forest Research and Development] is needed;
- Engagement with stakeholders and wider society will be particularly significant in this workstream, and will need to go “well beyond” the working-group model recommended for the other workstreams.
Workstream 3: Organisational development
This workstream concentrates on five of the Mackinnon recommendations, which together are concerned with streamlining the department’s forestry resources.
In their meetings with O’Hara, many stakeholders noted that the department is “always reacting”; appears to take a “ad-hoc” approach to issues; and “lacks visible leadership”.
The objectives of this workstream are to ensure staff, structures and systems in the department can meet the requirements of Irish forestry; and that the department, COFORD, Teagasc and Coillte work better together.
The key actions outlined by O’Hara here are as follows:
- A review of the structure, skills and culture across the combined forestry teams is “urgently required”;
- Updating structures and capabilities in order to “drive out inefficiencies” and to develop a culture of “positive shared responsibility”;
- Identifying shared skill needs and training providers between the private and public sectors;
- Customer relations “must improve”, with a clear statement of performance expectations;
- More effective key performance indicators should be established and incorporated into the department’s corporate management.
O’Hara also argued that there is an “unhelpful personality-driven blame culture” externally when it comes to department leadership and management.
Workstream 4: Process improvement
This workstream accounts for eight of the Mackinnon recommendations, and concerns improving the licencing processes into the future.
The objectives are to ensure that the licencing processes deliver better results; fully address legal and regulatory requirements; and deploy resources more effectively.
According to O’Hara, “poor practice” from applicants, including “inappropriate ‘cut-and-paste’ applications and speculative applications”, will have to be driven out.
Key actions here are as follows:
- Reviewing legal aspects is “urgently needed”, involving wider expertise on both EU and domestic legislation aspects;
- An end-to-end process review using professional systems analysts to identify further improvements, including a tightening of procedures for “rejecting poor-quality applications”;
- The introduction of targeted pre-application discussions;
- The proposal for an environmental report with an associated grant should be developed and piloted in advance, and should ensure quality across applicant types;
- A feasibility study should be carried out to explore the potential for single consent associated with a management plan;
- All work in this workstream should be undertaken on a partnership basis, and should be “considered alongside, or part of, the wider transition process to introduce the next CAP”.
Workstreams working concurrently
The workstreams will work concurrently, and each will be supported by a working group made up of stakeholders drawn from Minister of State Pippa Hackett’s existing Forestry Policy Group.
Each working group will be chaired by an “independent, experienced outsider”, according to the minister.