Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and her officials. As she knows, we have had numerous committee meetings on the forestry issue and it affects quite a large part of our country and our economy. We have devoted a great deal of time and it looks like we are not getting the figures or the targets we had planned. There are working groups meeting but we have been told today they are not working. Is it not embarrassing for the Minister of State, as a Green Party representative, to hear that protests are being planned outside Leinster House by the forestry stakeholders due to inadequacies within her Department in the area of forestry, which see us now not being in any way able to meet targets and which will have a knock-on effect on our carbon targets? The Minister of State said a while ago that we will look back at this as a blip. To the people who want to sow or fell forestry, this is a tsunami that is not being resolved. I would like her to answer that question. Does she feel it is embarrassing that is what we are facing in this country at present?