Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I do not doubt that the Minister of State is extremely genuine in what she seeks to achieve. There is no doubt about that in my mind. Dare I suggest, respectfully, there is a level of granularity that needs to be worked through. That must be acknowledged.

The Minister of State said the Department will reach the 8,000 ha target this year. That remains to be seen. I suggest respectfully that the stakeholders are not seeing the reality of that in the issuance of new afforestation licences. The proof of that is in the toolkit, which is the dashboard. The aspiration might be there but the evidence of the practical outworking of reaching the afforestation targets is not.

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