Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and thank her for taking the debate. I know she treats this issue with the same importance as everyone else. I want to acknowledge that. I thank her for coming back from her trip to COP26, which I hope went well for her and for the Department.

To follow on from other speakers, I want to share the frustration that farmers and others in the sector have in terms of the process and the licensing delays. I listened to the Minister of State's speech and she is correct to say things have improved over the last number of months. Fair-minded people will recognise that and see the work the Minister of State is doing to try to alleviate and solve the problem. The issue, obviously, is that because so many licences have been delayed, it takes time to get them all through. Despite all the improving and streamlining of the process the Minister of State has done, the frustration for people who have not yet got their applications or licences resolved increases when we tell them things are speeding up. I have spoken to the Minister of State before and she knows there are a lot of cases in Tipperary, where people have been waiting two to three years for licences. There is a level of frustration and the confidence in the sector is dropping, given that frustration.

We have ambitious targets which the Minister of State wants to meet but which we are missing at the moment. From a Government perspective, we recognise the importance of the forestry sector, and we recognise the importance of maintaining people in the forestry sector and bringing new people in.

The Minister of State talked about the independent regulator. When replying to the debate, she might expand on how she sees the independent regulator's review helping the sector.

A number of speakers referred to nurseries, from which there will be huge demand in the coming years. I live about a mile from SAP Nurseries, which is just outside Cahir. It is run by the Walsh family. They have been in business for as long as I have been alive and they provide a wonderful service. If we are going to plant more trees and put more demands on this sector, they need support. What supports do the Minister of State and her Department envisage for such companies and for sawmills? The sector employs an awful lot of people, for example, at Smartply and Dunne’s Sawmills. There are so many businesses with staff who are either directly or indirectly employed on the back of forestry and it is important we support that going forward. I would be interested to hear what type of supports the Minister of State is talking about for that sector.

On an issue raised by a couple of other Senators, I would like to hear about the timelines. This is one of the real frustrations for people. It is like everything: when people apply for something, they want to have some idea when a decision will be made, or even a gauge. We would often have planning queries or other queries with county councils and we would always have an idea whether it is going to be four weeks or eight weeks before a decision is made. In forestry, when someone submits an application, he or she does not have a clue when it is going to be decided upon.That is where the frustration starts in the first place. A constituent of mine is waiting three years. Such a long wait means people almost give up hope but they should not because the Minister of State is committed to solving the problem.

While I agree with the many Senators who have spoken about the frustration in the sector, I do not wish to go over the same thing again. I acknowledge that progress has been made. Some people in the sector acknowledge that, but the request is always to speed things up more.