Mr. Colm Hayes:

The Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2020 was to better regulate and improve the appeals system. As the Secretary General said, we had the bones of 1,000 appeals on hand coming into 2021. The appeals committee is independent of the Department but it was recognised that it was not functioning as it should and some changes were made in the Act, for example, to provide for sub-committees of the main appeals committee. A fee was also introduced, which really just brought the appeals system in line with the planning system in terms of the cost associated with submitting an appeal. That has been very effective. The Forestry Appeals Committee has on hand maybe between 20 and 30 appeals on forestry licences, which is down from somewhere close to 1,000 in 2021.