Government must sort out forestry licences mess: IFA
The government target of setting 8,000 hectares of forestry each year as listed in the Climate Action Plan simply will not be achieved unless the current logjams connected with forestry are addressed, the IFA Farm Forestry Chairman, Vincent Nally, said.
The situation is “a mess”, particularly with regard to felling licences and many applications are now waiting for more than 12 months to get their approvals, he explained. It is making it increasingly difficult to manage forests and with costs continuing to spiral, is making many operations commercially inviable.
“Farmers are exasperated with the lack of progress and with the increasing costs associated with getting a licence,” he said, and the new Interim Standard for Felling and Reforestation has put more complications in place.
Familiar outcomes as Abbeydorney avoids the showers
The perils of holding open air events in Ireland was a matter that was apparent to the Abbeydorney Ploughing Society on Sunday when the annual ploughing match took place at the Dowling family farm at Kilbricane.
“We were very lucky with it because it stayed dry up to four o’clock and we got finished just in time before the rain came again,” Tom O’Mahony, the PRO for the Society, said.
Out on the field, a number of winning sequences were continued by some of the prominent exponents of the plough in the current season.