Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support the amendment. Section 18 of the Forestry Act 2014 sets out the timeframe within which the Minister and officials are required to make a decision on an initial felling licence application. The wording of section 18 is loose and, therefore, the timeframe of four months is merely an objective. It is an aspiration and need not be met. Therefore, the deadline of four months is not a deadline at all.

While I welcome the fact that the Bill does much to improve the appeals process, I believe that by not accepting this amendment an opportunity is being missed to more clearly define the time limits that should apply for the consideration of initial applications. The purpose of the amendment is to replace section 18 of the Forestry Act 2014 and introduce a mandatory eight-week deadline for the making of initial decisions on licence applications.

There is no reason in the world we should not deal with this situation in the exact same way as we deal with an application for planning permission to a local authority. In that case, an applicant makes an application. Then, after eight weeks the applicant is told one of three things. He is told the application is granted or refused or else he is told the authority is seeking further information or clarification of some aspect of the application. An applicant would have a statutory time in which to submit the further information requested. The authority - in this case it is the Department and in the case of my example it was the local authority - would have to come back within a given timeframe. These would all be statutory due dates. In other words, people making applications would have a good idea on the day they apply and could gauge when they would know exactly what they were doing.

That is what Deputy Fitzmaurice and the rest of us are trying to do. We are simply trying to assist the Minister of State. There is one thing we want to make clear. I know that I speak on behalf of virtually everyone in the Chamber - I must put on my glasses to see the Minister of State when I am saying this. By working this evening with the Minister of State we are not working against her. We are trying to work with her. We agree with what the Minister of State is doing. All we are trying to genuinely do is make a tighter and better Bill when it is finished compared to what it is at present. We are not criticising what the Minister of State is doing or the work she has done. All we are genuinely doing is trying to get our amendments accepted by the Minister of State so that we will have a watertight Bill afterwards that we can all be proud of. That is all we are trying to achieve.

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