Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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We are on course. We are processing at least in excess of 100 per week at the moment and we are on course to meet 4,000 licences issued this year. That is up from approximately 2,000, from memory, for last year. That was an historic and unacceptable low. We have made progress over the past year, especially in the second and final thirds. There was an interruption over the summer due to a statutory requirement change and the process had to be adjusted. We hope to push on significantly and further improve on that next year.

The legislation we introduced around this time last year enabled the capacity to put statutory timelines in place. At the moment, the key objective is to get the number of licences up significantly and deal with the backlog. When we achieve an equilibrium there is capacity to put statutory timelines in place but I do not have a timeline for that at the moment. The key objective is to keep the graph going in the right direction, keep the output growing and deal with the backlog to get through it in the best timeframe we possibly can.