Mr. Colm Hayes:

My thanks to Deputy Collins. I will address the final question first. Horticulture and peat are not my areas but I will take a note of the question and ask someone to respond to the Deputy directly.

We have set out our stall on the main question. For this year, we see ourselves increasing by 80% the number of licences issued compared with last year, which was not a good year.

I have set a figure of 4,500 licences for the year as our output. It really depends on the volume that those licences hold but in previous years the number of licences issued by the Department is usually between 4,000 and 5,000. It was a bit higher in 2019 but that figure was skewed by a large number of Coillte thinning licences. Our target is an 80% increase on last year. I could not possibly underestimate the challenge in getting that out. However, the improvement since October has given us hope that we can get there and certainly there is no effort being spared in investment in resources. We went back to the market last week for more ecologists. Every new person means more output and we want to continue that.

We started the year as we mean to go on, with 350 licences in January. That is 830,000 tonnes of timber which I think will be the end of month figure. If it is, that is a very solid start to the year and one we would like to drive on. That is our target and strategy for the year. I would think that Grainger's and the people the Deputy referenced would be pleased if, by December, I was reporting figures of that order.