Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I worry about this. In the week the committee had the Department in, to be fair, there was a real surge that week and 68 and 41 licences were issued for felling to both Coillte and the private sector. Funnily enough, since then, the figures have come down to 23 and 24, 5 and 21, 23 and 14, and, on the 30th, it was 51 and 22, so that week was way higher. This needs to be addressed, given timber is now coming in from other countries. There are 2,700 licences and I cannot get my head around the question of why, when a Minister says there is no problem with those, they cannot be processed straight away. Why can we not see a figure on our dashboard in the next week or ten days that 1,000 licences will be put out, if there is no problem with them?