Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 4 October 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Ireland's Forestry Programme and Strategy: Discussion
Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I will briefly add to that. It is important to acknowledge what the team has done over the past couple of years in getting to this situation in the context where, as a result of a court case, things were changed radically, which led to a massive backlog. That obviously put massive pressure on the industry and all involved in it. It also posed a massive challenge to the team. We have gone from a situation where there was a massive backlog of 6,000 applications on hand more than two years ago to 2,000 on hand today. For every 40 felling licence applications we receive, we are now issuing 60 licences. That is the current form. It is why we are in a position to get to a more normal way of going in terms of being able to deal in a timely fashion with new licences that are coming in.