Dr. Catherine O'Connell:

I thank members for the opportunity to address them. I am representing the Irish Peatland Conservation Council, IPCC.

Peatlands are regarded as among the harshest environments on the planet because they are waterlogged all year round and species of animals and plants that grow in them need to be specially adapted to survive. IPCC, however, says that peatlands are superheroes. The reason is that they carry out important functions such as purifying water, sometimes mitigating flooding, and providing a home for rare plants, animals and biodiversity. They beat nearly every other ecosystem when it comes to carbon storage. On top of that, they are part of the cultural heritage and they have an immense recreational value.

IPCC contends Ireland has 275,000 ha of peatlands with conservation value, including fens, raised bogs and blanket bogs. These are all peatlands of a kind that are rare or extinct elsewhere in Europe and the world. The quantity of land represents 23% of the original peatland area in Ireland. The rest has been man-modified by industrial and private peat extraction, forestry, grazing, land reclamation and other uses.

When Dutch peatland scientists came to Ireland in the 1980s and witnessed the extent and speed of the degradation of our peatlands, they took two steps. The first was to encourage the formation of IPCC to campaign for the conservation of bogs and the second was to raise funds within the Netherlands to purchase three peatlands in Ireland. Once the sites were purchased, they were donated to the Irish people as gifts with the simple message that we should conserve our peatlands while we still have pristine examples remaining. The Dutch logic was that a peatland in pristine condition costs very little to protect and manage by comparison with a site that has been damaged and needs costly repair. Dutch peatland managers ended up spending millions of euro trying to restore their lost heritage.

Despite the friendly Dutch advice, the current Irish peatland conservation scheme is not working. We have reached the stage where we need to invest millions of euro to protect our peatlands or risk a future where a sod of turf will be a peculiar item on display in a museum cabinet.

Several factors have led to our present critical situation and are likely to drive certain peatland types to extinction if action is not taken. My submission contains a number of pictures that illustrate the points I am making. Damaging activities on designated sites occur due to inadequate regulation. Figure 1 shows the extraction of turf using digger and hopper machinery on Slieve Tooey SAC in County Donegal. Figure 2 depicts something that just happened over Christmas 2018, that is, not enforcing planning law, which allows developers to drain peatland for horticultural peat extraction such as at Doolistown Bog in County Meath. This is occurring as we speak. The third point I want to highlight is the provision of permission for a wind farm development within the Lough Derryduff-west of Ardara blanket bog SAC in County Donegal. Figure 3 shows an aerial photograph of the intact blanket bog where the development was given permission.

On wind farms, IPCC have analysed ten years of its work on wind farm applications. We are at a loss to know why, in all that time, a county council has never cited the intrinsic value of the peatland and its habitat as a reason for objecting to a wind farm development. That tells us something about awareness of this issue.

The second significant point I want to make is that the lack of management of sites that have been designated is causing degradation to continue and this, in turn, is driving habitat and species losses. The NPWS reports describe the peatland habitats as drying, shrinking, cracking, slumping and eroding. Its Status of EU Protected Habitats and Species in Ireland reports from 2007 and 2013 shows that within the array of peatland sites, the status of bogs changed from bad to increasingly bad over the six-year period covered. Figure 4 of our submission, which is from the report, shows raised bogs affected by the lack of consultation on restoration plans.

Owing to a lack of consultation on all the plans, etc., that have been written, we are still not able to get down to the process of managing all the sites. That is facilitating further loss because the habitats are degrading as we speak. Species such as curlew and large heath butterfly are at risk.

The final point I want to make is that the unprecedented delays in designating fens, raised bogs and blanket bog sites, engaging with the landowners involved and setting conservation targets for these ecosystems means that sites cannot be protected from damaging activities, nor can restoration begin. This is perpetuating loss. This seems to be due lack of Government commitment, a lack of personnel and inadequate funding.

What can we do to stop the loss of our peatlands? On the positive side, the peatlands strategy and a raised bog management plan are in place. Some communities are engaged in the process of managing sites, and a considerable body of knowledge and research is available about how peatlands work. On the other hand, progress is constrained by the need for more staff in the NPWS to conduct surveys, consult landowners, set conservation targets and carry out management work.

Of course, we need more money to facilitate all of that.

The IPCC has been in existence for 37 years and our work on saving bogs is entirely funded by private individuals. To date, we have spent €4 million buying bogs, campaigning and educating children. This must be proof, if any was needed, that there is a positive attitude among the public towards conserving peatlands but we need to commit to delivering peatland protection by engaging with people, bringing every voice into the process and being transparent in all decisions relating to the management of our conserved peatlands and peat resources generally. This is what it will take to turn the tide and provide a future for Irish peatlands and their wildlife.

I thank the committee for its invitation to this meeting but I feel that two groups are missing today. The first is the largest owner of peatland in the country, namely Coillte, and the second is a large peatland user, namely the Turf Cutters and Contractors Association, TCCA.