A NEW TREE planting scheme, which would allow individuals to plant up to one hectare of land without a forestry licence, is set to be launched later this year.

The scheme, which is being led by Green Party junior minister Pippa Hackett, would see landowners given the go ahead to plant native Irish trees on up to one hectare of their land without a forestry licence. 

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.

This scheme is set to be part of a wider forestry programme that will be published before the end of the year, following impacts on the sector since 2019 due to EU and Irish court cases on environmental regulation.

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.

However, the targets did not include targets for either land use or forestry, with the Government delaying that decision to allow the Land-Use strategy to be completed.

So far this year, there are 3,581 forestry licence applications with the Department of Agriculture, which is a reduction on the number of licence applications from 6,100 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.

The Department is currently targeting 5,250 licences to be issued by the end of 2022, which it says is currently on track.