Mr. Colm Hayes:

Historically, in the interests of fairness and equality, we try to clear out the oldest files because they are longest on the books. We have engagement, particularly on the afforestation side, with forestry companies and applicants. If an application is that long in the system, we want to know whether it is likely to be viable and whether the landowner is still interested and, in which case, whether we should proceed. It is in everybody's interests that we only work on licences that proceed to planting. In the case of afforestation, about 40% of what we approve does not end in planting. There are a few in the system. It is possible there are cases, as in any land question in Ireland, in which there are legal issues and land disputes. I would have to look at the individual cases referred to by the Deputy.

The policy is to maximise the output of licences and to go back to historical cases. We have what we call a triage team of inspectors. In May, it did a historical exercise looking back over every single felling licence on our books and reviewed the environmental harvest plan that was with them. This was a very thorough exercise. Cases in which it was deemed the harvest plan was suitable proceeded to the next stage - the ecologist. That is borne out in the much higher figures for private licences that have been issued because the ecologists are dealing with something that is in a more suitable state. Those which were deemed to have gaps in their harvest plan went back to the companies. They did not go back lightly. They were returned with a bespoke report from us which outlined where the gaps were, if there were bits missing and were asked to come back to us. As the Secretary General said in his opening remarks, the companies have responded and are coming back to us. We are staying in touch with them and these cases will be moved on. That is borne out in the higher private felling figures in recent times. That triage exercise is now a feature of our review of any licence application that comes in. It is work that we have to do. We are doing the same with afforestation applications now. We have completed a similar exercise on forest roads as well. There is a huge amount of background work which is not visible nor possible to report upon on any dashboard, but it is something which pays significant dividends.