Home News Farming Laois Farm Forestry Group meet with Minister Pippa Hackett and public representatives...

Laois Farm Forestry Group meet with Minister Pippa Hackett and public representatives as frustrations continue

The Laois Farm Forestry Group (LFFG), which represents the private forest owners and growers in the county met with Senator Pippa Hackett, the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with responsibility for Forestry and Biodiversity and some of her officials at Andy Dunne’s ash woodland at Clonad near Portlaoise recently. 

The meeting was also attended by Sean Fleming TD and Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Carol Nolan TD, Brian Stanley TD and Conor Bergin MCC and Cathaoirleach of Laois County Council.

Damien Brophy and Cathal Carroll of Brophy Timber Services, and Steven Norval and Marie Buckley of Coolrain Sawmills representing the wood processing sector in the county were also present at the meeting. Liam Kelly from Teagasc completed the attendance.

The Minister saw the damage caused by the ash dieback disease first hand and noted the loss caused. 

Speakers from the growers and the timber processing business impressed on Minister Hackett the significance of the forest sector in the local economy with Eoin Phelan noting that forestry in Laois engaged about 550 farmers directly and employed about 600 people in contracting and processing.

Highlighting its importance, he said that “forestry is our Google or Facebook”, and it needed to be considered in that scale. The multiple environmental benefits of forestry and woodland were also pointed out.

Michael McEvoy, chair of the LFFG, outlined to the Minister the problems of the sector at the present time, in particular the licensing quagmire which is causing untold difficulty for all involved. 

He stressed that the license issue was only a symptom of a greater malaise in forestry and that it was entirely negative in the promotion of on-farm woodland.

In suggested improvements, Andy Dunne pointed out that Minister Hackett needed to quickly restore confidence in forestry amongst the farming community as there was none evident at present.

He suggested that new legislation providing for a single forestry consent in line with the approach of many other countries was immediately required, attractive and innovative new forestry schemes which addressed landowners’ commitments to environmental issues along with a robust promotion of forestry as a land use were amongst the things that needed to be done.

All the public representative present offered wholehearted support and a strong cross-party consensus in support of the sector was very clear. s.

Steps have been taken to progress an external regulatory review of forestry, Minister Pippa Hackett told the gathering.

Recognising the concern of those she met to address licensing issues, Minister Hackett said:  “I fully understand the need to alleviate the backlog in forestry licenses.  That is why I am delighted that a contract for a regulatory review of the licensing system will be awarded in the coming days.

“While we are making improvements, we know we must go further, and this review is going to look at the existing statutory framework in relation to environmental and public participation obligations so that practical advice can be provided to us on how to work more efficiently within the existing legal framework.

“It will also look at arrangements in other EU Member States to see if lessons can be learnt from them.

 Elaborating on the resourcing and other improvements which she said had already been made, Minister Hackett continued:

“We’ve gone from having one ecologist working in the Department in 2018 to having 27 today, while the number of forestry inspectors has increased from 40 to 61 since last year.

“That has moved us to a situation where we expect to issue a steady flow of over 100 licences per week for the rest of the year.  In addition to that, we have dealt with the backlog in appeals.

“The Forestry Appeals Committee has less than 50 outstanding appeals to hear which is a huge reduction from the 1,000 they faced not so long ago.’

As well as discussing the regulatory review, she told them that the Department was considering a proposal for a grant to contribute to the cost of environmental reports for afforestation applicants.

And she also revealed plans for a public consultation on a new vision for forestry in Ireland.

She said:”I established Project Woodland to progress all the issues in forestry concurrently, so I am very happy to see the work that Working Group 2 is doing on developing our new vision for the sector.

“The Project Board, has given it the green light to design a public consultation process on the new Forest Strategy.

“This will be a unique opportunity for all of us to determine how Ireland’s forests will look like in 50 to 100 years and I am very excited to see the outcome of our joint efforts in around this time next year.”

Michael McEvoy, in closing the meeting, thanked the Minister and all the public representatives for attending and for their support and he urged the Minister to pull out all the stops to deal with the problems and to quickly restore confidence in farm forestry.

The issue also came before today’s meeting of Laois County Council following a motion by Cllr Conor Bergin.

He called on Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue and Minister Pippa Hackett to sort the issue immediately.

He said: “Minister Hackett is very good at calling on this Council to do things, so now we are calling on her to act.

“This is our Google or Facebook – if this was happening in Dublin, people would be jumping up and down.”

Cllr Caroline Dwane Stanley said: “I know of one case in Coolrain where they are waiting three years on a licence.

“And as a result they have had to import from Scotland, that is madness.”

Cllr John King described the situation as shameful while Cllr James Kelly said that ‘red tape is going to cost jobs’.

SEE ALSO – Laois woman to contest next Assembly elections in South Belfast for SDLP