Mr. Brian Lucas:

Imported peat versus peat extraction here is one of the issues that were identified in the key issues paper so, from my Department's perspective, it is an issue we identified. It is not the job of my Department to do a detailed analysis of that. As one of the committee's previous witnesses has already pointed out, the legislation is in place. That legislation regulates horticulture peat extraction and large-scale peat extraction generally. It is fair to say that one of the committee's witnesses previously pointed out the problems with the legislation for the horticultural industry, but this legislation is not new. There was, again in the previous session, an attempt on the part of two Ministers at the time to move away from these regulations and bring in statutory instruments. Those statutory instruments were thrown out by the High Court. We are therefore back to the legislation that has been there all along and we need to see what can be done now, in both the short term and the medium term. The short-term problem is to see whether we can move away from the dual consent system and bring in some other legislation that gets over the immediate problem that, as I think some of the committee's witnesses have said, there will be no peat for horticulture by the summer or by September or October of this year, roughly. That is the immediate problem. We need to get people into the working group to climb up into that solution. As I have said before, however, and will say again, the responsibility for that legislation does not come within the remit of my Department if we are to move to some kind of system involving the EPA because that agency comes under the remit of the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications.