Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

I think there were four questions there. The first was about the drop-off in the licensing rate in July. We did write to the committee and I have explained already that was a result of this new statutory instrument that required us to do a second period of consultation between the date of an appropriate assessment report and an appropriate assessment determination. That meant we essentially had to halt licensing for anything referred in for appropriate assessment for that period. That is a new 30-day period and it just took longer than we expected to develop new processes and systems around that. Consequently, we effectively lost eight weeks of high-output licensing and in that period, we were only really able to issue licences that were not referred for appropriate assessment.

The Deputy's second question was on the external review. This is on foot of recommendations from the working groups in Project Woodland. We have run a tender and we got four bidders. I think we are in a position today to say we have a preferred bidder. We must now make a recommendation to the Minister about accepting the bid. I cannot say much more about that except we are at the point of selecting somebody today. There is no danger of it sitting on a departmental shelf because this was one of the working groups in Project Woodland. This successful tenderer will be engaging with those working groups to discuss their concerns and ambitions for the activity with them, so that will happen.

On the 4,500 licences, what I said in my opening statement was that it will be very difficult to meet that target because we have essentially lost eight weeks of that high output. A more realistic target now would be around 4,000 licences. I think that addresses all the Deputy's questions.