David Maxwell (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

I think it was last year that Ms Morrissey made comments that the aquaculture licence applications sent into the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine were being dealt with in a reasonable timeframe but she then spoke of historic delays and awaiting a European Court of Justice ruling under the birds and habitats directive. Ms Morrissey said:

We are now almost at the end of the process in dealing with the aquaculture licensing backlog [with 30 remaining finfish licensing applications in line to be determined by the end of 2024]. The 'Review of the Aquaculture Licencing Process' was carried out in 2017 with 30 recommendations for a more streamlined, efficient aquaculture licensing system - DAFM are currently working on implementing these...

Has the backlog been gone from the end of last year? What about the 30 recommendations for the streamlined aquaculture licence system? Where is that at? If the witnesses could please answer those, I will come back with something else.