Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to ask about the current backlog of applications. According to the opening statement there are 1,090 afforestation applications, 730 road applications and 2,700 felling applications on hand. Can the officials tell us the oldest application in each category? When was the earliest application submitted in respect of those three categories? Can they give us figures in hectares in respect of the afforestation and felling applications? Those figures suggest to me that a very big alarm bell should be ringing because we have 2,700 felling applications but only a little over 1,000 afforestation applications on hand. If we are proposing to move to a point where there are 8,000 ha planted per annum, then we should expect and hope that afforestation applications are ahead of the felling applications. I ask the witnesses to explain the reason for that differential.