Mr. Eamon O'Doherty:

The four working groups are chaired by an independent, non-Department head with senior experience and who is either a civil servant or a semi-State employee. Equal with that person is a senior Department manager whose job is to also act as a reference point for the working group in terms of the actions and recommendations that are coming up from the group discussions, which are typically held fortnightly. Each working group comprises a mix of forest policy group, FPG, members or sectoral interests that are not in the FPG. The working groups also receive secretarial support from the Department.

It is important to realise that the four working groups contain elements of longer term activity. Work group 3, for instance, is looking at the organisational development of the Department, possible transformation and a customer charter. That cannot be done quickly because it also depends on work coming from the current process. The current process around licensing is extremely complicated. There is a systems analyst working on that full-time to try to understand the different nooks and crannies of the processes. That is before we get to the point of recommending how those processes can be optimised or changed. The organisational development can then be wrapped around that. What we do not want to do is change the organisation and find that our processes cannot support it.

Work group 2 is looking at a longer term vision for Irish forestry. The creation of that vision has to take place before 2023 but it is a longer term thing. It has to develop a strategy and then feed into the EU forest policies that will come down the track in January 2023. Those two groups do not provide quick and dirty solutions to anything.

The fourth work group, which is around the idea of process improvement, first has to understand the processes that are taking place at the moment and it is doing that well.

They are due to report on that sometime around the point at which the legal and regulatory team comes on board. That tender will be due for submission in the early part of September. It will be given three months to report. Therefore, the short answer is “Yes”. It will be next year before that part that can come in. The process improvement cannot take place until we understand what can and cannot be done in, for instance, the 15 km screening limit. Many possible suggestions are coming from the working groups. This is a complicated environment. People are expecting quick and dirty things to be done. However, in my experience of working in large industrial projects, that would be a mistake. I appreciate that everyone is frustrated with where we are at the moment and with the long road to getting licensing on track. However, there needs to be patience and an understanding that Departments cannot just change course completely overnight. In reality, Project Woodland has been up and running since the start of May, or the tail end of April. We are two months into it. Much work has been done and many useful papers have been produced by the groups. In my view, one or two of the recommendations that have been made are not ones that the Department can implement without appropriate advice. Some of these were mentioned earlier - for instance, the single consent licensing and the planning grant. We are going out for advice before ministerial direction can be determined. Some of these things are important in regard to the role of the Minister and some of them can be done. Every day Mr. Collins is running with slight changes to the way the ecology process is working to try to speed it up. It is speeding up, but slowly. That is the reality.