Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. My objective as Minister is to support farmers and farming incomes in every way I can. I am constrained in how I can do that in a transition period between one CAP programme and another. I maximise every opportunity available to me to try to ensure that every opportunity is provided to farmers to continue to have their income maintained, hence the continuation of the schemes that were in place, whether that be GLAS, the beef data and genomics programme, money for BEEP-S, areas of natural constraints, obviously, and the sheep welfare scheme. Alongside that is additional new funding for measures such as the new agri-environment results-based pilot scheme.

To touch on the issue of forestry, over the past two or three years, we have seen a carry-over of capital expenditure in forestry into the subsequent year. One can carry over capital from one year to the next. The vast majority of forestry funding goes on recurrent expenditure for forestry grants. There is also afforestation grant aid. As a result of the targets not being met in recent times, there has been an underspend in that regard. Last year, for example, €13.7 million was carried forward and continued into this year's budget.

The Deputy's point that the licensing situation must be sorted out and addressed is absolutely spot on. Both myself and the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, agree with that fully. We are doing all we can to try to address what was undoubtedly a crisis situation at the end of last year, and continues to be such. We are making every effort to resolve this.

As I said, there have been significant interventions regarding the emergency legislation last October with regard to the project woodlands. That is a representation of the massive effort and steps taken by the Minister of State to try to streamline the licensing process and get the numbers up, because they must come up. The backlog and delays we have seen are simply not acceptable. It is something about which the Department is very much aware and we are doing all we can to try to address the issue. The Minister of State and I are very much aware of the stress and impact that is having on the sector, and also the fact that it has made the achievement of our aims of new afforestation simply not possible unless we address the current licensing situation and the problem that exists.