Mr. Jason Fleming:

You are talking about between €600 and €1,000. It all depends on what kind of road you are on, be it a rural road or a main road.

We need proper individuals to take down these trees because they are unstable. The roads need to be blocked on either side. It costs a significant amount of money.

When we apply for a licence, it should be the same as applying for planning permission for a house. There should be one licence and one licence only. Get that straight through the clear felling. When a person approaches a local county council, which would be Kerry County Council in my case, to apply for planning permission for a house, that person does not have to go back two years to look for permission for a septic tank or go back three years to seek permission to put in a wall, hedge or lawn. That is not the case. We are dealing with forestry and it is very simple: we need one licence. I know of situations where farmers were left waiting for four years to manage their crops. It was too late when they received their licences. Crop management usually takes 15, 16 or 17 years. Farmers being farmers, and I am one myself, we apply when we need a licence and not three or four years in advance. When we got the licences, it was too late to tend the sites. That was a massive problem in the past and will be, going forward. We have seen the figures. It took 18 months in 2022 for a forestry licence to go through.

The Minister set up Project Woodland, which I am involved in on the behalf of the forestry committee. To call it frustrating would be an understatement. We were rehashing the same stuff. It was a bit like what previous speakers have said has happened. We were rehashing the same stuff. It was a fair kick in the teeth for us as farmers and for the committee that discussions with investment funds were going on behind the scenes in a different room while we were doing our best to get stuff over the line with Project Woodland. The biggest problem with Project Woodland was that there were four different groups and there was no communication between them. I was in working group 1, which dealt with licensing, and there were three other groups. There was not a lot of communication between those groups. As a committee, we are not in a space to sign off on Project Woodland at the moment. There is a lot of work for Project Woodland to do yet. I do not think it should be finishing the way it is.