Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentation. There are a few things we need to clarify. We met Bord na Móna last year and the year before. A document was given to us called Just Transition and it was to work until 2025 to 2027, and we have met Mr. Willie Noone several times. The rug is being pulled at the moment. We are trying to put seven or eight years into one. It is unfortunate, and I will be very clear on this, that over the last three or four years, parties that would align themselves more to unions than we from the private sector were harping within the Dáil and the Seanad about trying to get rid of peat and fossil fuels while they are now trying to save the world in getting solutions for those poor workers who are facing doomsday. A year ago Donnelly's coal yard in Galway - Mr. Noone will be familiar with everything that I am talking about - was Bord na Móna owned. What was the solution? Redundancy. What was done with the workers? Nothing. The Sligo coal yard workers are gone. This is calling a spade a spade but anywhere there was a jobs announcement, it was a redundancy. There was no other solution.

Just transition is not there at the moment. To be quite blunt about it, and we can kick Bord na Móna up and down the road, the ESB has not made enough of an effort to keep this on the tracks, to which everyone bought into including all politicians, for 2025 or 2027. That is the total of it. If legislation needed to be changed, or derogations or whatever needed to be done, that should have been done. My understanding was, and correct me if I am wrong on this, that it was looking at growing herbs and at fish farming. I do not know how much it would solve. I refer to the announcements at the moment. There are people who are 61 and 62 years of age. If they go for redundancy, they are being blocked. If one wants to solve a problem and if there are people who are 61 or 62 years of age, they should get the redundancy package. On where we go with the workers who are there, I think it needs to be clearly stated that if Bord na Móna or any other organisation is talking about rewetting bogs, it is a procurement process. That is it. I with my one digger will come in cheaper than someone who has a group of offices and all the different things. Workers should not be codded as to the reality that is coming here.

On retrofitting, which has been trumped as €20 million or whatever, if I am from Donegal and I am able to do the job, I am entitled to go for that work the same as anybody else. It is not going to be solely the Bord na Móna workers. I think what needs to be done is that a fund is given to Bord na Móna for the restoration through their own machinery that they have there, because most of these people were driving tractors, were on diggers or were out on the peat harvesters. They were on machinery out in the bog. There was a lot of railroad track to be lifted. There is a lot of rewetting. They will need a bit of training. The figures we have seen, coming from the National Parks and Wildlife Service - this needs to be acknowledged by all - are as follows: €5 million in rewetting, 17 diggers with 17 people, using plastic liners for 240 days along with an engineer and an ecologist doing the different works. We need to make sure that whatever funding comes goes into the bucket for Bord na Móna. If it goes out to procurement then those workers have no future in it. That is the bottom line. If we do not put it into a fund for Bord na Móna with a guarantee that those workers will be kept there until what we were told, 2025 or 2027, then there will not be a just transition at all.