Independent TD for Laois Offaly, Carol Nolan, has called on the Government to lift the ban on peat harvesting amid the energy crisis and Russia’s war on Ukraine.
She urged the Government to, at minimum, temporarily suspend the current system of regulation that is preventing the large-scale extraction of peat from Ireland’s bogs due to the current surge in the price of fuels in Ireland.
Deputy Nolan said the war in Ukraine has shifted global priorities including the “frantic and disproportionate efforts to decarbonise societies”.
A high court ruling in 2019 effectively banned commercial peat extraction, finding that large-scale harvesting required planning permission along with a licence from the EPA, and detailed environmental impact assessments, required under EU law.
But now calls are being renewed to restart peat harvesting in order to supply the horticulture sector.
The Independent TD, who is a member of the Dáil’s Rural Independent Group, also said that the crisis in Ukraine has “exposed the absolute folly of Governments determination to allow the outsourcing of a key element of the nation’s food security architecture in terms of access to milled peat for use in the horticulture sector”.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has changed everything. It has up-ended global ‘priorities’ such as the frantic and disproportionate efforts to decarbonise societies against the express preferences of the majority of ordinary people,” Deputy Nolan said.
“We are now in the midst of a global energy crisis that looks set to deepen rather than abate in the coming months and even years. So, in that sense it is entirely irrational to continue acting as if we do not have widely available, viable and immediate access to a fuel and food security source on our own doorstep.
“Government cannot and should not continue to maintain the prohibition of peat extraction for harvesting. It also needs to immediately recognise that the borderline characterisation of our horticulture sector as a bunch of ‘eco-criminals’ is profoundly unjust.”
“We need our peat contractors, farmers, mushroom growers, vegetable and grain planters to be given the regulatory and legal space that they need to bring about the kind of fuel and food security that we desperately need given the chaos in the work markets.
“We have the means and the people. We only need the Government to get off their backs and to stop acting like everything in these areas can proceed as if nothing has happened and as if the world has not been turned upside down,” she added.
Deputy Nolan said that the Government must re-examine a series of decisions that it took in mid-January with respect to the horticultural peat sector.
“I am calling on Government to urgently revise its response to the Horticultural Peat Report and I am specifically asking both the Minister for Planning and the Minister for Agriculture to accept the recommendations of the Report so that we can avoid the calamitous outcomes that will inevitably overtake and collapse the sector in their absence”.
Deputy Nolan’s latest appeal to the Government was echoed by former justice minister and TD Charlie Flanagan. He said the Government should review the ban on peat harvesting “against the backdrop of war in Europe and consequent fuel and energy challenge”.