Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to add to that. When both the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, and I came into office in early 2020, there was a growing crisis at that stage.

Up to then, licences were issuing in a relatively timely manner. The result of that court case, however, meant that the time and resources going into processing each application in hand radically increased. This led to the build-up of a significant backlog. After the Minister of State and I, and our teams, were appointed, much of our first year was spent dealing with managing that crisis. This is what it was. We needed to massively increase the resources and the number of staff in the Department and examine and radically change our systems as well.

I remember that three years ago this Christmas, coming up to Christmas 2020, we were in a situation where sawmills across the country were running out of logs and were not able to function. Some of them were having to put their employees on three-day weeks. This was the situation. We were living from hand to mouth in respect of trying to get things through the system. Over the last two to three years, therefore, we have worked our way through that backlog and reduced it. When we were talking to the members throughout 2020 and into 2021, some 6,000 licence applications were being processed in the Department's system. We have now reduced this number to 2,000, which is much closer to what the normal business would be. Regarding any new licence applications coming in now, the commitment from the team is to take six months for those screened out. This is for new licence applications to get dealt with.

Last year, for example, we had a record. We issued the largest amount of licensed felling, in terms of volume, in the history of the State last year. We have, therefore, worked our way out from that acute crisis to a situation where we had a record in terms of licences for felling issued last year. We have now got to the situation where licensing processes are getting back to operating in a normal fashion, with the new forestry programme in place. We are in a much better and different place. With everyone working together now, the objective is to rebuild confidence and advertise clearly what is in place in order that people can expect an efficient service when they engage in respect of licensing.