On 25 February, the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Senator Hackett, announced Project Woodland, a new strategy to address the licence crisis in the forestry sector. Despite the fanfare to date, Project Woodland has not delivered one additional licence. Farmers in the industry cannot wait any longer, nor can the construction sector or people who want to build homes. There are approximately 5,000 applications for afforestation, forest road and felling licences in the system. These are pending decision. Based on the current output and the fact that 195 licences were issued in April, it will take a further two years to clear the backlog let alone process any new applications.

This is bizarre; it is GUBU type stuff. People cannot get timber. It has gone up by 100%. The sawmills cannot get it and cannot sell it on to merchants and people cannot roof their houses, build extensions or do anything else in the middle of a housing crisis. This is pure and utter madness and it is unacceptable to the sector and to the farmers.

Project Woodland is a good initiative. Clearly, there have been significant backlogs as a result of all the objections to a host of licence applications in recent years. There has now been significant recruitment to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, and a 90% reduction regarding aspects of this. However, there are still backlogs. I met recently with the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, the Secretary General of the Department and the assistant secretary with responsibility for this area with a view to accelerating this process and ensuring we can introduce greater capacity to get these licences processed.

A two-year delay.