A new tree-planting initiative that would allow anyone to plant up to one hectare of land without a forestry licence is scheduled to go into effect later this year.
Pippa Hackett, a junior minister for the Green Party, is in charge of the initiative, which would allow landowners to grow indigenous Irish trees on up to one hectare of their property without a forestry permit. This is equal to 10,000 square metres.
A spokesperson for the Government suggested that this could be used by farmers to utilise any vacant land on their farms without needing to go through the forestry licence process.
Following impacts on the sector since 2019 as a result of EU and Irish court cases on environmental regulation, this scheme is set to be a part of a wider forestry programme that will be published before the end of the year.
The plans comes a month after emission reduction targets were agreed by the Government, after an agreement was reached over the targets for the agriculture sector.
As a result of the government postponing that decision to allow the Land-Use strategy to be finished, the targets did not include targets for either land use or forestry.
3,581 forestry licence applications have been submitted to the Department of Agriculture so far this year, which is shorter than the 6,100 licence applications that were submitted in August 2021.
There has also been a significant drop in the number of appeals against forestry licences, with less than 20 currently ongoing compared to a previous high of over 1,000.
In total, there were 4,050 forestry licences issued in 2021 which was higher than the 2,592 issued in 2020.
By the end of 2022, the Department wants to issue 5,250 licences, and it claims the plan is currently on track.