Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

One of the benefits of democracy, when it works at all which is not that often, is that one learns things. Even better, people are watching and are hearing the debate, which I am certainly learning from. They then bring to bear facts that impact on the debate we have heard. I have received one communication that is very interesting in that regard. It challenges very strongly the rationale behind the Bill and the rationale of many of the Deputies who have spoken in favour of this amendment. The rationale behind the Bill is that all these blackguards are appealing felling licences and this has caused a huge problem with people employed in the forestry sector sitting idle. To be honest, listening to the debate I thought maybe this is the case. I thought that maybe I had missed something because forestry is not huge where I live, although it is substantial enough in County Wicklow, which is not far from me. Of course, the Government has more or less been saying the same thing. The rationale is that we need to fast-track the appeals process, albeit not as fast as some Deputies want, but there is the problem of a massive backlog, and also that somehow these two things are connected. There is a backlog but is it connected to what we have heard here, factually? The Minister has not provided any evidence. However, somebody has helpfully provided a little bit of evidence which blows the argument completely out of the water. Let us have a guess as to what percentage of afforestation licences in 2019 were appealed.

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