Mr. Colm Hayes:

On the volume requirement of Coillte in any one year, as I understand it, Coillte brings its timber to the market in two forms, that is, a contract position at the end of the year and in advance of the following year and through a series of auctions. It is up to Coillte how much timber is brings to market, but, generally speaking, it indicates to us the volume of licences needed, which is a steady amount from what I have seen over the last three years. Coillte is operationally independent of the Department.

Coillte received its full allocation of licences for 2021 in March or April. In previous years, it would always have been licensed for a particular year in October or November of the previous year. That is where we want to get back to because that is not just a Coillte issue, it is a question of security of supply for all of the sawmills who will have discussions with all of their suppliers, banks and everybody else once that is in the bag. Coillte submitted 1,800 licence applications in the month of March to cover the period 2022-23. Working the maths on that, it will need roughly 50%, or in the region of 900 to 1,000, for 2022. Work in that regard is ongoing.

On the other question, Coillte is one applicant, the same as all of the other applicants. I refer to the point I made to Deputy Carthy earlier. There is a big variation and far too large a variation in the length of time it takes to license a site which, for private sites, can be anything from one month to, as in the example given by the Deputy, 1,000 days. Ultimately, what we are trying to get to, and what everybody is trying to get to, is a reliable, secure timeframe for the processing of licences such that an applicant can be relatively assured, all going well, that he or she will receive a licence within that timeframe. At the moment, it takes ten months on average to secure a licence from the Department. We would acknowledge that this is far too long, but it is a process of continuous improvement. Every metric is up this year on last year. Every category, including roads, afforestation, felling, across all the volumes and numbers of licences, is up on last year. There is improvement. The question was asked about next year. We expect that they would be up next year as well. It is about driving down the length of time to process a licence such that an applicant can be assured he or she will receive the licence in a reasonable amount of time. That is the nub of the issue.