Mr. Seamus Dunne:

The Senator asked whether we require the ecologist to do something similar if the applicant gives an ecology report. Our ecologists review everything that comes in so if there is an ecology report by the applicant, it must be reviewed on our side by an ecologist. In the case of felling, we issue licences that do not have land information searches where we carry out the appropriate assessment report and appropriate assessment determination. When the private ecologist produces a land information search, our ecologists would review it and produce an appropriate assessment determination so in all cases where there is ecological input on the private side, it would be reviewed in the Department by our ecologists.

The Senator asked about the number of ecologists in the Department. I think the figure is around 21. There are nine permanent staff consisting of a head of ecology with eight staff. We have a contract with Fehily Timoney, which has seven ecologists plus one environmental scientist working on licensing. We have a lot of freelance ecologists who mostly work part time but bring it up to about 21 full-time equivalents.

The Senator asked about what other member states are doing. It is fair to say that many member states do things differently from us. Not all of them have lighter regulation regimes around forestry. The Netherlands has a complete ban on all felling from April to September during nesting season whereas we would have a similar ban in special protection areas. Not all regimes around Europe are similar. The major difficulty we have had in the past two years is compliance with the appropriate assessment procedures and the habitats directive. This has led to delays. We would have to do a really detailed analysis of how other countries comply with the habitats directive, which basically refers to any project that may affect any site regardless of the separation distance involved. As I said earlier, the 15 km are not laid down in law but are used as an industry norm in this country. If many of a country's protected areas are in one part of the country, that would explain how the appropriate assessment would not feature in the other parts of the country. Ireland has designated many of its river systems as SACs, which means that virtually every catchment in the country is hydrologically connected to an SAC. This may not be the way in other countries. We would need a detailed look at other countries.

The Senator mentioned management plans. Certainly management plans are received instead of a licence application. Regarding the management plan detail, we have guidance around management plans and it is really useful for owners to have management plans. It is normally a bit more detailed than we would expect in a licence application. If we look at a licence application, and we have templates on our website, we can see that we receive management plan-type information. Does that explain some of-----