Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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I have a good few questions and I will do them in lots of three. I welcome the guests.

I am disappointed, as others have said, that we are still discussing how to reach the target the Department has set. We seem to be standing still or going backwards and the buck has to stop with the Department and the Minister. It is wrong that we are seeing businesses close, as the Chair and Deputy Fitzmaurice said, because of incompetence, it seems, from the Department.

In a recent parliamentary question I asked if, prior to March 2021, Coillte had been able to provide generic non-site specific harvest plans with felling applications and if this had been accepted practice between Coillte and the Department. In the response, the Minister said that applicants are encouraged to include them with their licence application and that Coillte have done this with their recent applications accepted in March. He added that Coillte had undertaken to provide further site-specific information in support of their recent applications. Yet, in response to another parliamentary question, the Minister told me that 1,864 licence applications were received from Coillte on 15 March 2021 and pre-licensing work had begun immediately with applications. Given that Coillte’s licence applications did not contain the required site-specific information, how come pre-licensing work began immediately on them? If a private licence application is not up to the required standard, the Department returns it immediately and it is not processed. Is Coillte receiving preferential treatment from the Department? Is it a coincidence the applications were being processed and not being returned to Coillte until around the time the issue started to be questioned? Why is the Department prioritising Coillte licence applications when there are applications going back to 2016 still in the system?

There is a feeling out there that there has been an industrial system in forestry, which was to some extent rectified in 2009, when the case was made that forest farmers should be entitled to the single farm payment. Yet some elements of this industrial consideration continue to exist in terms of the 15 km Natura impact assessment rule. Other countries make a distinction between industrial and agricultural and use a 5 km rule for the latter. Why are we different?

Is there concern in the Department that trees ready to be felled would have an impact on our carbon sequestration targets because of a failure of the licensing process? A vast proportion of trees were planted around 1990 and it is coming up to harvest times for those. I have been told there are concerns in the Department that if the trees are felled which are due to be felled then, because of the Department's poor management of the forestry sector over the years, by 2025 we could be sequestering less carbon than we are now. In other words, there are suspicions that the delays are happening by design to hold up harvesting.

If I can get answers to those first, I have another couple on ash dieback and Project Woodland.