The Irish Farmers Association, Farm Contractors Ireland and many farming families are outside protesting today because they are not allowed to cut timber. The price of timber for contractors and people building houses has gone through the roof. Will the Taoiseach please ensure that the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, takes her hands off the steering wheel and allows the farmers who committed to put in forestry - and the contractors who have millions of euro worth of machinery to do business - to provide the sawmills with timber and provide people with timber to roof their houses and everything else? We are importing timber, which is nonsensical.

The Minister of State was not elected to government; she was appointed to the Cabinet and she is hell-bent on destroying this sector. The Taoiseach sacked Deputy Cowen, who would have done something for rural Ireland, as Minister. This has gone beyond a joke. A Bill was passed in the House last year and it has been useless, toothless and fruitless. We need action because nobody will plant a tree if they are going to be blackguarded in this way. They are waiting for felling licences but there is a backlog in the Department. This is what I call State terrorism. The State is blackguarding these people who made commitments. The Taoiseach needs to do something about it.

I regret the degree to which the Deputy has personalised this against the Minister of State, Senator Hackett. It is all wrong to refer to her destroying Irish forests. The Deputy should really cop on.

She is responsible.

The Minister of State is doing the opposite. She wants to facilitate, streamline and get things moving in forestry. However, there has been a situation going on for quite a while, as the Deputy knows, because of objections that happened prior to the legislation being passed last year. We are very conscious that we need to move fast to get more houses felled, sorry, trees felled and new tress planted as well.

You cannot see the wood for the trees.

The Deputy knows that a huge number of additional staff have been allocated to the Department in that respect, including ecologists, forestry inspectors and administrative staff.

They are not coming out.

The last three months of 2020 were the highest months for licence output, with approximately 900 new licences issued. Licences for a felling volume of some 2 million tonnes issued in that time, which was 40% of the output for the year. There are improvements happening but they need to happen more quickly.

Thank you, Taoiseach. The time is up.

A total of 1,700 licences have issued so far this year-----

The time is up. I call Deputy McNamara.

-----and the output is increasing week by week.