Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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137. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government his plans to deal with the backlog of deer hunting licence applications; when persons can expect to have their licences issued; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29700/20]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Applicants for deer hunting licenses are always advised to apply before July to ensure that they get their licenses before the beginning of the deer hunting season. At this stage all applicants who had applied before July will have received their licenses. By the end of this week, some 4,000 licenses will have been issued since 1 August.

Notwithstanding this, I am aware of some delays in my Department in processing later batches of deer hunting licence applications this year and that some deer hunters have not received their licenses yet. The delays arise too as a result of the ongoing Covid-19 public health emergency and the effects this has had on travel and working arrangements. While staff in the unit that deals with the issuing of licenses continued to attend the office during the crisis, given restrictions, the numbers of such staff attending was, of course, restricted. The database system used for managing deer licensing is not currently a web based one and some technical challenges arose in facilitating the processing of such licenses for staff working remotely with laptops. Staff continue to work to eliminate the backlog as quickly as possible.