Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There are 2,000 applications stuck in the system. Serious questions need to be asked of senior management. If one commits manslaughter, one would only get seven years, or one may not even get seven years. I know of a man who reared the finest family of daughters but his application is in the system for seven years. I have 27 applications from a small forestry consultancy firm.

Most of them go back to 2018 and some to 2017, and one fellow has been waiting for seven years. Surely those kinds of people deserve an amnesty now. In the current system, there is no timeline. We in the Rural Independent Group fought very hard to provide timelines for applications and for freedom of information, FOI, requests. Even Deputy Kehoe admits there should be a timeline.

It has been brought to my attention that there is a boatload of timber coming from Scotland to the value of €230,000. That is a loss of income to small Irish farmers. The Minister of State needs to pull out all the stops. This cannot and will not continue. The fellows who have presided over it will be paid, along with their pensions. I am sorry to see what is happening to people in rural areas and people who were depending on this. We talk about felling licences but the Department gave these people grants to plant forestry and premiums each year. There should have been an expectation that they would at least be able to cut and sell it and build a road to take it out. Those forests were planted 20 or 30 years ago. We are now making laws retrospectively to stop them removing or selling the timber they had expected to sell. We talked about Coillte getting felling licences, but this is the company's second or third time-----