A deadline would be reasonable if the resources were made available and if the Department could guarantee that there was full compliance. If we just ram a decision through in an arbitrary eight weeks and are not in compliance, we will be in court the day after anyway because somebody will take us to court for having breached the directives. What we need is for the Department to put resources into ensuring that we are in compliance and that we change the forestry model so that we do not find ourselves in these diffi…

I understand Deputy Cairns's frustration, but these circumstances were set up the moment the Government tried to ram the Bill through. It was always going to happen that we would be in this situation, which is why I kicked up about it on the Order of Business yesterday. The normal process of pre-legislative scrutiny would have meant we would have dealt with much of this earlier. We would have dug into the detail earlier, as well as the debates and the proper consultation that should have happened, and it would have…

I will. I am dealing with the amendments.

It is a group of amendments.

It is a group of amendments.

All the amendments in the group centre on the same subject.

Every amendment in the group centres on the same question, namely, whether we should rush things through and short-circuit the process or instead protect the process by which citizens can appeal. That is what the debate is about and it is what all the amendments in the group are about. Our amendment in the group is amendment No. 59, so that is what I am speaking to, but I am also speaking against the idea that solving the problems that have been highlighted will be done by introducing an arbitrary timeline of eight…

That is the Deputy's opinion and I disagree.

No, the Deputy is trying to spin it.

He was having a pop. That is what he was doing. For the information of Deputy Mattie McGrath, the decline in output in the processing of applications by the Government dwarfs the figure he mentioned. It is a decrease of 2,000.

The Deputy wants to know why there is currently a backlog in the industry. It is not the few hundred appeals he referred to, although I do not deny that is an issue; it is the decrease of 2,000 in the processing of applications, most of which would not have been appealed. They would have gone through but they are not being processed, and that is the problem.

Last week, I brought the attention of the House to the fact that the acting Chief Medical Officer and NPHET were not coming before the committee on Covid despite having been invited. It is a completely unacceptable situation. Before the weekend, I discovered from the Covid committee's secretariat that NPHET would not be attending again despite the consternation and debate in the Dáil last week. NPHET was due to attend today but will not be doing so. I wrote to the Covid committee over the weekend to express my dism…

It was not.

That is not true.

Shameless.

That is a total misrepresentation.

I am afraid I will have to call a vote on this proposal. It is completely unacceptable. The manipulation of the speaking order is bad enough but the ramming through of the Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020 on Wednesday is an absolute abuse of democracy and it cannot be allowed to stand without serious objection. The Bill has been described as "shocking" by the Environmental Pillar. The latter group, the Woodland League and others have expressed deep concern about the net deforestation that may now be ha…

We have submitted dozens of amendments. Deputy Naughten, who has a different perspective on the Bill, has indicated that he put in 12 amendments. There are some 100 amendments in total.

I agree with Deputy Danny Healy-Rae that all the amendments should be debated. It is unacceptable that Second Stage should run on into Committee and Final Stages when most of those amendments will not even be debated. That is completely unacceptable and there is no justification for ramming the Bill through in this way. I sought a briefing on the Bill from the Oireachtas Library and Research Service but none was available because of its late publication. Yet the Government is proposing to ram through all Stages. We…

If we had decent jobs instead of bogus self-employment in forestry then I might agree with Deputy McGrath.