The Editor
The Anglo Celt
20/07/05
RE: Letter to the Editor
Dear Editor,
We wish to express our support for the motion adopted by Cavan County Council that afforestation should undergo the same planning process as other development. We congratulate the Cathaoirleach, Mr. Eddie Feeley, for highlighting a problem long experienced by many regions, and for tabling this motion.
Current regulations make planning permission only necessary for initial afforestation which would involve an area of 50 hectares (128 acres) or more, or replacement of broadleaf high forest by conifer species, where the area involved would be greater than 10 hectares (25.6 acres). The latter situation hardly occurs in Ireland due to the absence of mature broadleaf forest.
If the area to be planted is greater than 25 hectares (62 acres) the application is referred to the relevant local authority to ensure that the proposal does not conflict with any aspect of the county development plan.
If the area to be planted is greater than 2.5 hectares (5 acres) a notice of the grant application is published in the local papers. This is purely to alert you to the fact that a proposal has been submitted and does not give you any specific right to object.
This has led to a situation where in many areas individual applications for afforestation were under the threshold for which planning permission or referral to the local authority was required, but accumulated with adjoining plantations to a much greater planted area than 50 hectares.
Those plantations tend to be conifer plantations, despite the fact that on much of the afforested land native broadleaf trees could have been grown. We know that farmers are often ill advised in regard to the suitability of their land for broadleaves or proper mixed plantations. Quite often farmers are also, , discouraged, for economic reasons, from planting native broadleaves, whereas in fact this broadleaf planting will pay the farmer and the environment better in the long term.
We agree with the Council that the public should have the right to participate in the decision making process on afforestation. The adoption of this motion is timely after Irish afforestation policies were sharply critisised by a recent EU wide audit of forestry funding that has questioned the payments made in Ireland by the Forest Service under the Rural Development Programme 2000 – 2006.
The EU Report, published on the Court of Auditor's website www.eca.eu.int, shows that the whole intention of the European objectives to balance environmental and social values with the commercial was circumvented in Ireland. The objectives were undermined in order that ordinary investers could claim the longer term grants which were designate only to be given to farmers. The report also found that national accountability was poor as and that there were no independent checks on who got what grants.
CLEAN hopes that other Councils in the country will follow the example of County Cavan.
Yours sincerely
Peter Crossan, on behalf of CLEAN
