Mr. Colm Hayes:

I hope I captured all of Deputy Collins’ questions. I touched earlier on the first question around the four months and the key performance indicators. This is one area on which we are expecting detailed recommendations from the working groups under Project Woodland. We are aware we are not meeting the deadlines set for ourselves in many cases, although we are in some cases. That range between when applicants receive their licences is too broad at the moment and, obviously, our aim is to drive that down to the lowest possible number and to help to meet these targets.

The stakeholders are doing some very good work on this as part of Project Woodland and we will wait to see their suggestions in terms of deadlines. Obviously, they have to be realistic about the processes and procedures that an application has to go through in terms of third-party referrals and all that sort of business. I will wait to see what they come up with. There is a strong recommendation within the Mackinnon report around the development of a customer charter for applicants, and that is something we will certainly do. However, we first need to have that discussion around the indicators.

On the question of Ireland being an outlier when it comes to regulation under the EU regulations, I think it has been answered and I do not think we need to repeat what was said before. I am very happy to engage with the Deputy bilaterally or I can repeat what was said earlier. Again, we are expecting an end-to-end process under Project Woodland which will see a comparative analysis with other EU member states and for that to be a key feature of the work.

In a way, that answers the Deputy’s third question, which is what role regulatory reform plays in this whole process and in Project Woodland. It plays a key part. We have always been very clear that if anyone comes along with any feasible suggestion on how the regulations can be done in a different way, or how we can meet our environmental goals under the EU directives and, at the same time, issue more licences in some sort of alternative way, we are absolutely open to that, no question. We have engaged with every stakeholder and repeated that message at every opportunity. I am very hopeful that Project Woodland will be the vehicle to do this. There is serious work going on under four excellent working group chairs, aided by the arrival in the Department of a new business analyst, who started this week, and by Eamon O’Doherty, who is managing the whole project. I expect we will see some significant recommendations in that space. To put the Deputy’s mind at ease, regulatory reform absolutely has to be part of the discussion and absolutely is part of the discussion.

On engagement with other Departments, we engage with the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications on the implementation of the climate action plans. We have done presentations on this at various forums. Our output is well known and is not a secret because we produce a weekly dashboard, which is effectively a public document at this stage. I am on record from earlier in the meeting about sharing the concerns of members in terms of the afforestation targets not being reached and how important it is to reach those, particularly in the attainment of the climate action plan goals. It is full shoulder to the wheel on that.

We have not had direct engagement with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage as regards any potential impact on the housing sector. I would reiterate earlier points that everything, including evidence from the construction sector itself, is pointing towards a significant boom at present in commodity prices across timber, steel and concrete, and all of this has to be better understood. We obviously do not buy or sell an ounce of timber, so it is the sectoral representatives who will be better able to fill in the Deputy on that.

Looking at what is coming from some sectoral representatives, we are dealing with global commodity price increases. To what extent the supply situation here exacerbates that domestically is something the committee would need to hear directly from sectoral representatives. Much of our material is exported as well. At a guess, this is somewhere between a market and a supply issue but I am not qualified and do not have the commercial information from individual companies to answer in detail. It goes back to everything we have been doing so far. The solution here is more licences and that is our aim for 2021.