Tom Sheahan (Kerry South, Fine Gael)

When does the Minister of State envisage the backlog will be cleared? When we spoke about this matter on 6 November last, I received a reply, which is a copy of the reply he has just read. He said he was totally committed to the elimination of this backlog as a matter of urgency. In terms of the number of applications that have been processed since 1 January, many more than that number have been submitted since then. On 6 November a list of 254 applications had been processed. At the rate applications are being processed, it will take a long time to process all the applications submitted. Important opportunities in the fishing sector are not being taken up because of the antiquated licensing system in place. I hope it can be modernised and that the applications can be processed much quicker.

See this speech in context