Mr. John Neenan:

I will take that question. I will start by answering Deputy Carthy’s earlier question which asked what was the size of our industry. The area of land for horticultural peat production in Ireland is 1,700 ha, which is 0.12% of total Irish peatlands under production. This is a very tiny area. The carbon emissions from the area that produces horticultural peat is now less than 0.15% of total Irish emissions. We are talking about a very tiny area of peatlands and the emissions are very small and are in fact less than that because we have not yet finalised the research on how much carbon is taken up by the plants that are growing.

Returning to Deputy Flaherty’s question, the ask is that we want the legislation to be amended urgently in order that we can get back harvesting in 2021 and have sufficient peat to meet Irish demands. Currently, there probably is sufficient peat to meet Irish demands until September of this year. After that it will be completely comprised of imports. We offered a solution to the previous and present Governments that was prepared by our solicitors and legal advisers, McCann FitzGerald, who are saying that the solution is not complicated. It complies with European and Irish law and this solution says that we can under Irish law remove peat again from the planning process and beef up the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, which would allow us to go back to harvesting. That can be done by way of secondary legislation and statutory instruments. It was not the case that the previous legislation that came in in January 2019 was of the wrong type but it did not give sufficient powers to the EPA. Our solution, which we have given to the Government and copies of which are available for anybody to read, would overcome this and we could be back harvesting this year. This would overcome the problems that we have in the rural parts of Ireland, which are suffering greatly. There are jobs there already which we need to keep, rather than trying to create new jobs.

The second thing we are looking for is a just transition. We do not want to be thrown off the cliff at this stage and that is what has happened. A just transition is what has been referred to on this issue on all occasions.

We are not just producing peat and nothing else. Three of our members in Growing Media Ireland have five wood fibre plants between them producing wood fibre for both the professional and hobby market. This does not just concern peat as we are spending millions of euro in research and development on a continuous basis.