Mr. Peter O'Brien:

The first question was about the critical issues. The critical issue is the Department's total inability to deal with licensing. The legislation on the habitats directive has been a place for a number of years. It started to become an issue in the forest service towards the end of 2018. The approach to dealing with the problem has been wholly inadequate.

It is important that I give some background to how we have arrived at this logjam. As Mr. McAuley said, there are 1,800 or 2,000 applications sitting in the ecology department. They did not arrive in there; a sequence of events caused the build-up of applications. When it became evident that an appropriate assessment had to be carried out on the application for licensing and a subsequent Natura impact statement may have to have been prepared, the forest service decided it would endeavour to get its people to do that. My understanding is that no other Department or a licensing authority takes that approach. It is up to the applicant to submit the appropriate assessment and the subsequent Natura impact statement, if necessary, with the application. The licensing authority then makes a determination on that information.

It is quite an onerous job to prepare a Natura impact statement and it has to be carried out by an ecologist. The forest service decided to get its inspectorate to do the screening. The inspectors are foresters, not ecologists. This process was taken in hand by the Department in 2019. It was not fit for purpose. My understanding is that the inspectorate said it was not fit for purpose, yet management proceeded along the same path.

The industry was reassured on numerous occasions that this would be sorted out and there would not be a problem. Through the first four or five months of 2020, practically no licences were being issued for afforestation, felling or roads. The applications have been referred to the ecology department and it was not possible to deal with them. I understand at that stage one ecologist, or possibly two, was employed to deal with the continuous increase in the number of applications being referred to the ecology department.

The industry was reassured on a number of occasions that there was a process in place that was fit for purpose and there would not be any issue. The industry made a recommendation to management in the Department that one of the recommendations in the Mackinnon report, namely, the possibility of introducing a grant or payment towards the cost of the preparation of the appropriate assessments or Natura impact statements, would be made by the Department. That proposal from the industry was flatly refused by the Department's management. The industry could see that the problems were not being addressed.

In July, a project plan was put in place by the Department. We viewed its targets as being extremely soft. By the Department's own calculations, it will be the end of 2021 before the 1,800 applications in the system will be cleared out. That assumes no new applications will be submitted. This will be the case even with a fully resourced Department with more ecologists and inspectors. The first three months of the plan have seen the Department achieve 50% of its own soft targets. This is a crisis. We need to achieve at least double what the Department has in its soft targets for the private sector to have enough licences to fell the amount of timber outlined in the COFORD supply report, build the number of roads required and reach a target of 8,000 ha per annum. We will be lucky to achieve a little over 2,000 ha this year. That is a quarter of what is outlined in the programme for Government.

This is where the problem lies and it is why we are where we are. It is a resource issue, but it is also a systems issue, given that the system is not fit for purpose, specifically where licensing is concerned. In order to achieve 8,000 ha per annum, meet our targets in private sector felling of available timber and construct roads, we will need approximately 3,500 licences.

That does not even take into account the chalara issue, which the committee discussed with other witnesses two weeks ago. There are between 4,000 and 5,000 forest owners with ash plantations that are dying or dead. It must be remembered that chalara did not just appear in Europe five years ago. Rather, it was in eastern Europe 25 years ago. The Department was negligent in not preventing it from reaching our shores. A scheme to deal with chalara was rolled out in June, but it is not fit for purpose. It is too complicated and, as far as I am aware, no applications to it have been approved. These are indicators of the levels of catastrophic mismanagement by the Department.

I will make a further point about roads. In the Department's October figures, more than 200 felling licences were approved but only 19 roads were approved for construction. How does the Department expect us to get the timber out of the forests? Felling licences are very important if we are to get timber to mills, but if we cannot get the timber out of the forests in the first place, we will not get them to the mills. These are facts.

I will turn to solutions. In the short term, by which I do not mean months, but immediately, the solution is the real allocation of resources, not just pushing resources from one area to the next. The FAC has to be resourced to a point where it can release those felling licences that are ready to go.

However, there is no point in doing that if resources have to be taken from the licensing area and put into the forestry appeals committee. New resources must be put in place to get these licences out of the FAC without impinging on the resources available for the issuing of licences in the first place.

The system is not fit for purpose and does not stand up to scrutiny. Applications have been in the system for two years or longer. The uptake in licences issued, from an afforestation point of view, is extraordinarily low, at 60%, because it takes so long to get a licence. Anyone who has been waiting for two years for a licence will more than likely have done something else with the land. Either that or the applicant has amazing faith in the forester he or she is dealing with. If it takes that long to get approval to plant a handful of trees, the system is not fit for purpose.

These are the endemic problems on the afforestation and felling sides. It is not just in one area but across the entire industry. As Mr. McAuley said, the industry is in crisis. It is not a case of tinkering around the edges next year. Unless something very serious is done in the short term, the industry will fall off the precipice. The industry is in absolute crisis and that crisis lands on the management in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

The Mackinnon report was commissioned by the previous Government to look into how the Department manages applications. Clearly, therefore, the way in which the Department carried out its business must have been a concern to the Minister at that time. This was before the appropriate assessment problem brought everything to a head this year with the requirement for the legislation to be changed.

James Mackinnon is a planner from Scotland who looked at the afforestation sector in Scotland. At the time, afforestation had fallen to around 3,500 ha or 4,000 ha per annum. He looked at how the systems worked in Scotland. He was commissioned to do a report here and examine how the Department did its business. He issued his report in February of this year. It is referred to in the programme for Government and the previous Administration identified an individual as the most qualified person to implement the report. Nothing has happened, however. Would its implementation help? Of course, it would but where is the political will to implement it? We cannot stall or talk about looking at forestry next year. That will not work because there will be no industry by the middle of next year.

As a result of the Mackinnon report in Scotland, planting increased from 3,500 ha to 11,000 ha within four years. We have more than enough interest in this country to achieve a target of 8,000 ha if the Department were to get its business in order.

The current mechanism requires not just the implementation of the Mackinnon report but also the appointment of somebody who can actually deliver. I will not call that person a project manager but someone who will look at the system, make the necessary changes and deliver the licences. That will not happen with the current regime.