Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

I accept what the Deputy said about the general narrative out there and the licensing is part of that. My point earlier on was that forestry is still a pretty good option, from an income point of view, for farmers and it can coexist. It is not an alternative. It can coexist with livestock farming which is good. Of course, we have to fix the licensing problem. The Deputy was asking me what the quick fix would be, if there were one. If there was a quick fix, I would have done it long ago but things have been suggested. It has been suggested we have some kind of an amnesty. I do not know of any legal basis for that. If we wanted to be cavalier about it, we could say we will give everybody an amnesty as we are under fierce pressure from the agriculture committee and the sector and get many of these licences off the books as we can, in as quick a time as possible. We would end up in the High Court in ten minutes and then applicants would be in bigger trouble than they are now. We would have a significant problem.

We have to be careful, judicious and responsible about how we apply the law. This sector is quite highly contested in Ireland, which is not the case in many other member states. It is certainly not the case in Scotland, if you talk to Jo O'Hara with whom I have had many long conversations. It is just a different kind of dynamic in Scotland. I mentioned we had a period in which every Coillte licence was being appealed. People are entitled to appeal but that gives a sense of the difference in the dynamic here. We have to be very careful of staying on the right side of the law.

We have an external body. We are on the point of selecting it to do a regulatory review to look at the systems and members states. We are entirely open to recommendations that might come from that exercise. It will be informed by the working groups established under Project Woodland. These include representatives of various people with an interest in the sector. The power of that vehicle, which we have to be careful to cherish and look after because we take it very seriously, is that it brings people who have different views on forestry together to create a single vision. What you find there is that people on the environmental side are appreciative of the pressure on small commercial interests that are trying to plant forestry. Of course, they have their own equally legitimate perspective on compliance with environmental law. We have to balance those interests but we have to stay on the right side of the law. Sometimes, the courts make determinations that you have not anticipated but it is not a realistic proposition to just throw it out the window and have an amnesty. Some of the-----