Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

I believe we will have a very much increased level of afforestation in 2024 and 2025. It is not for me to resile from Government targets. We will be putting a very generous set of incentives in place and I believe they will be sufficient to significantly increase the level of planting.

On harvesting and roads, one of the things that affects harvesting is the price of timber globally, so, again, it is a multifactorial issue. What I can say is that the licensing system in the Department will not be a barrier to harvesting. There is plenty of timber in sawmills now and we have resolved the licensing issues on that. However, the demand for timber and the demand for harvesting are multifactorial things. The price of timber has dropped this year, for example.