Mr. Colm Hayes:

I will refer to the recent legislation first.

The legislation presented last year was quite simple and was designed to align the planning and appeals system with what happens in other local authority planning systems. That had a number of effects, including the introduction of a fee for an appeal and for a submission. It amended the legislation underpinning the Forestry Appeals Committee that allowed it to be more flexible in terms of how it does its business and subdivides into committees. It has been effective in many ways, particularly the subdivision of the Forestry Appeals Committee into four different committees. As I said in my opening statement, in its short lifespan the Forestry Appeals Committee has received more than 1,100 appeals on forestry licences. There are 48 cases left to be scheduled and 130 on hand. The difference between that 48 and 130 are the cases scheduled for hearing in May, June and July. Relative to where we were last year in terms of all of this, forestry appeals and the delays for all stakeholders in how the appeals system is run, it is fair to say that this is a welcome development and great credit and testament to the work of the people involved.

The Deputy also asked what is the one change we would like to see. There is no one change and that is the point. There is no silver bullet here. We are looking around and implementing various types of solutions. We have gone to Scotland to see what people there have done. It is sometimes gets forgotten that Scotland went two years without planting a single tree but eventually got its planting rate up to 10,000 ha per year. These are big ships to turn around. It is a big planning system, a €2 billion a year sector, involving thousands of landowners. This is big environmental legislation. For that reason, I think Project Woodland is the vehicle to deliver all of that because it is bringing all those elements under one roof to deliver on each of those aspects.

The current situation on licensing cannot be divorced from the long-term perspective on forestry and the development of a new forestry strategy and programme. The Chairman asked me at the start to address only licensing today but it is important that we take a longer, rather than an immediate, perspective on all of these things. We obviously have an immediate focus on resolving the licensing issues but we also need to keep a longer perspective and see where are we going. What is the next CAP going to do for tree planting? What is the next forestry programme going to do? How is it going to re-engage farmers? These are all perfectly valid questions that the committee has raised with us previously and we are considering them. I hope that answers the Deputy's questions.