We are quite capable of looking at alternative models while also seeing how the organisation is doing in the meantime. We're capable of doing two things at once. I'm just saying, from my own perspective, I actually was really keen to give this organisation a following wind—a sort of benefit of the doubt. When I came in, I think it was probably the major organisation in the purview of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee, and I heard a lot of criticism about it, but I was prepared to say, 'Look, it's a pretty new organisation, it's still bedding in; let's give it a chance.' I'm less prepared to say that two or three years on from when I did that, when the organisation had already been there for at least three years. I think there has to come a time when an organisation's failings continue and are so egregious that, actually, you do have to look at structural change. We should look at that while continuing to monitor what it's doing in the meantime.

I'd like to focus my remarks on two particular areas where I've been disappointed with the organisation, or potentially with the organisation's interface with Welsh Government, and they are forestry and marine energy. There's a huge opportunity in forestry. We've had a system with the common agricultural policy where the playing field is tilted towards agriculture and against forestry. Farming gets a subsidy on the basis simply of the land area, and that's taken away if it's given over to forestry, so that's a huge disincentive to planting trees. But as we move to our own Wales-based system, that should no longer be the case. Actually, NRW should have a huge amount of expertise that it can use to help expand the forestry sector, both within its ownership, but also, I think, by spreading best practice and building up facilities within forestry. One of those was meant to be this sawmill line. That was the supposed justification for giving these long-term contracts without proper competition, yet that sawmill line wasn't built, and we understand from the Public Accounts Committee report that NRW was likely aware of that, but didn't do anything to enforce the contract that was meant to be building up that capacity. So I ask the organisation: can't you do more to actually help farmers who want perhaps to plant some of their land with forestry, to help bring new people into the industry and expand this sector for the benefit of Wales and, indeed, in terms of our climate change objectives?

Similarly, in terms of marine energy, it should be a huge potential growth sector for Wales, and something again where we can look to our climate change commitments and reducing emissions. I understand that Welsh Government wants to prioritise this sector. I think the work that Marine Energy Wales has been doing, largely on something of a shoestring, has actually been very positive, and I understand the Welsh Government's behind it. But a lot of the problem is NRW, because if people want to try out a marine energy scheme, wave or tidal, whichever—put something on the surface of the water or on the sea bed that's trying a new way of generating energy and investigating its practicality—they have to go through an NRW licence procedure that treats them as if they're some sort of heavy industry, putting in something permanently that's got to have this great evidence base because they've done it before and can show NRW how there's no risk whatsoever. Having this precautionary-type approach and needing that degree of backup and information and evidence for something that, by its nature, is innovative and a pilot is putting a huge block on marine energy in Wales. People within the industry are tearing their hair out saying how difficult it is to get licences from NRW, and how frustrating it is to deal with that organisation. In Scotland, they instead have a deploy and monitor approach, yet in Wales every single licence thing has to be done individually. It's so difficult to do. You try and get advice from NRW and they just charge you several hundred pounds even for beginning to talk to you. Please, Ministers, if you really believe in this marine energy sector, whatever you do about NRW more generally, just see if you can help speed this process for licence applications to support marine energy, and don't let NRW be the block.