Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the officials back again. It is like groundhog day at this stage. As other speakers have said, it is becoming embarrassing to have to keep coming back to such meetings to hear the same thing over and over again. I do not know what way it is going to finish up. I can assure Mr. Gleeson and Mr. Hayes, who answered Deputy Carthy, that targets will not be met this year and if the same carry-on continues next year, we will back here next year and the targets will not be reached then either.

We all accept that the Minister of State, Deputy Hackett, warned us about July. I agree with the Chairman that the figures suddenly improved two weeks before this meeting. The committee was told that an administrative burden is associated with this process and that it is greater than had been anticipated. How long can the Department keep using these types of excuses? Will the officials explain how a 30-day consultation period resulted in an eight-week interruption in licensing? How many objections have resulted from the initial consultation process?

Most of the points have been covered. I visited an ash forest of 3.3 ha over the summer to look at dead and dying trees as a result of ash dieback. The application for the reconstitution and underplanting scheme, RUS, was submitted to the Forestry Service 14 months ago and it has still not been approved. The local authority has reclassified the replanting of part of the area with conifers as development, which requires the landowner to get planning permission for the small area. Can Mr. Gleeson or someone else do anything about this? Will they contact their counterparts in other Departments to have the legislation changed so that planning is not required for areas of less than 10 ha in such circumstances?

We are facing into a serious problem. I do not know who raised the issue; it may have been Deputy Fitzmaurice. We will have no one in the sector in 20 years' time because of the inadequacies of the officials. Farmers are not getting into forestry because they see the runaround people are getting. We all accept that we have problems now but we will have serious problems down the line unless people in the Departments pull up their socks.

It is embarrassing to have to come back in to these meetings. It is like pulling teeth. We are getting the same answers over and over again and the same excuses. We are told we will reach the target. There is not a hope in hell of reaching the target set at the start of the year. Without serious changes, the same discussion will take place again when we do not reach the monthly targets for next year.