Ms Geraldine O'Sullivan:

The legislation on the appeals is one aspect of it. That is after someone has gone through the internal process. Some 400 cases are caught up in the appeals system and 2,500 are caught up in the internal Department system. We really appreciate the urgency with which that legislation was enacted because it will allow dual cases to be heard which will be of benefit. There is a two-year process before an appeal is heard to allow someone to plant or sow. We will see the benefit of that.

For us, the main problem is the internal departmental system where over 1,000 farmers who want to manage their forests are caught up. As Mr. Cullinan rightly said, at this stage they typically want to go in to thin which is considered good forest management practice. Therefore, they are going in to build a forest road to access and to thin by cutting out one line in seven. It is a very minimal disruption and they cannot do that at the moment. We would like to see the Forestry Act 2014 amended immediately to eliminate the need for a licence for a forest road and for thinning operations. Those should be exempted developments that farmers can plan. They should submit a management plan and that should suffice. That is done in other countries. It provides all the environmental protection needed and removes farmers from the quagmire of the licence application process. It is one thing we could do with immediate effect, and it would resolve the backlog of 2,500 licences. The majority of the farmers within those are caught up with thinning and road building. Very few farmers have got to the clear-fell stage.

We need to make it farmer friendly. We need to address the blockages in the legislation, and we need to simplify the process. The average size is 8 ha. In many cases it is smaller. It needs to go through minimum costs of €1,500 just to get the licence at a time when it is not a highly profitable operation.

On attracting farmers into forestry, COFORD has assessed 180,000 ha of available land that has the productive capacity to grow timber, is outside designations and is excluded from the programme at the moment. That area coming in would result in an uplift if the right grants and premiums were introduced. There is land available. We need to review what we are doing. We need to make the system more farmer friendly and understand the scale of forestry - that it is forestry on farms. There is considerable interest among farmers in planting, but we have made the system too difficult for farmers to plant.