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

I just want to return to the Minister of State and to my overall point which I have been trying to make for the last year. This crisis is not of the Minister of State's making. It has been in the making for more than a decade. However, my difficulty is that the people who are responsible for this crisis are leading this process every step of the way. That is where there is a fundamental systemic problem. I have referred to it time and again.

You can have an entire strategy and set up all the reviews and have all the reports. However, if these are being directed by the people who have caused this problem in the first place, these problems will be repeated. Despite the optimistic tone of the Minister of State’s opening statement, there is no information over any considerable period of time to suggest that we have turned the corner. In fact, at best, we would say that we are stagnant. Has an analysis been brought to the attention of the Minister of State on why hectares of lands being planted do not even meet the number of hectares for which licences are being allocated? Has she commissioned any such analysis? This year, so far, more than 2,700 ha have been licensed but only about 1,500 ha have been planted. We cannot say that this will pass on to next year, because last year 4,300 licences were granted. This is already a pathetically low number, and yet fewer than 2,500 ha were planted. Have we got to the crux of why that is the case?