The Minister spoke earlier of the Government's environmental credentials. In that regard, there has been a lot of discussion about forestry and the solution that it offers to Ireland's environmental problems, in particular in respect of carbon sequestration, etc. However, the figures demonstrate a very different story. To date this year, seven afforestation licences have been approved. There have been 21 approvals under the ash dieback scheme. That is shambolic. This weekend, we are halfway through the year. The longest day of the year has come and gone. Planting season is coming and going. When challenged up to now, the Government has offered the classic response of British Tory Governments over the years, which is to blame the European Commission.

It looks like this year is going to see the lowest plantation levels in the history of the State while the Government talks great talk about the need to afforest this country. What is going on? What will be done to bring afforestation levels up to the Government's own targets?

I thank the Deputy. As he knows, I have provided numerous briefings to outline the position and the challenges we have had over the past six months. The factual position is that we are between forestry programmes. We are currently waiting for state aid approval of our new forestry programme. That means we have not been in a position to issue new licences in recent months and will be unable to do so until we get that new programme in place. We have, however, put an interim programme in place in order that trees can be planted under outgoing and existing licences. The really significant step we have taken is to introduce new premium rates, which increase the premium grants available to those who plant forestry by between 40% and 60%. For family farms, we have increased the number of years it is possible to get premium grants from 15 to 20. This means that someone who plants native broadleaf trees will receive €1,100 per year per hectare tax-free for 20 years. That means that over the next 20 years, €22,000 will be available tax-free. We also need a new forestry programme to enable those premiums to show their benefits and to see forestry numbers increase.