Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

They have not been sufficient. When a planning application for a house is made, a reply must be received within a set period of three months at most.

We still have not cleared up the issue of having three different licences in forestry. We need to create a system which allows that when a person applies for a forestry licence, thinning, roads and everything else is built into a single system. That would give people a bit more confidence and reduce the chances of people objecting to the planting of forests.

We are seeking to increase the percentage of housing built from timber to 80%. It is difficult to see us reaching that target, although I happen to have returned from Finland last weekend where most of the houses are built of timber and I must say they are extremely warm. It is the way to go but we have a lot of work to do to change that narrative. If we could, we could build an entire industry to build timber frame houses. However, perhaps we need to put a little more pressure on our local authorities. The State is building and funding X number of thousands of social houses per year. Should we require a minimum of those houses to be timber frame houses? We have not done that yet we are funding them.

We have a lot of work to do. We are aiming to move from 11% to 18% of forestry cover, whereas the EU average is 38%. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Housing, which is funding social housing, should provide that a minimum number of these be timber frame houses. That would help the industry as well.

I welcome the forestry plan. It gives certainty where there was none a number of weeks ago but more work needs to be done to build trust. There are many strong ambitions in it but it is up to the Government to put policies in place to meet those ambitions. We have an ambition to increase the number of timber frame houses in the country to 80% of those built, yet the Government has not done anything with regard to the houses that we fund and build.

I commend the Minister of State on securing such a significant amount of funding for the forestry industry.