Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 16 February 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticulture Industry: Discussion

Photo of Carol NolanCarol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Chairman giving me the opportunity to speak. I fully support what the witnesses have said and thank them for their points and presentations. A statutory instrument must be brought in to deal with this matter. People have a right to earn a living and rural Ireland is being discriminated against once again and being seriously impacted upon. Our economy is suffering dreadfully. I have never seen a case where workers lose their jobs during a global pandemic while the Government has stood idly by and let it happen. I have never seen that happen before and I do not think it would happen in any other EU country. We need to get our act together. All Government parties must support the need for a statutory instrument. Many people in the horticulture sector and contractors who have invested hundreds of thousands of euro in specialised machinery have all been left high and dry. It just does not make sense to punish our own people. EU directives have often been interpreted a certain way by this Government and we do ourselves no favours by doing that. Sometimes it is all down to interpretation of a directive. We need to fight for our own people and a statutory instrument is the only way forward. I fully support that and have called for it previously. I reiterate my concerns about this issue. Some jobs have been lost during the pandemic. That could not have been prevented and Brexit is a prime example of that happening as well, but this is something that can be prevented by goodwill and political action. I call on all parties, including the Green Party, which has expressed shock about the current situation, to support this. It needs to step up to the plate and its Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, needs to stand up as well. He does not seem to understand rural Ireland but he needs to understand that thousands of jobs are on the line.

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