Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests. Like Senator Boyhan, I condole with them on their plight.

I see the pure ridiculousness and stupidity of it. I know hauliers who are hauling peat from Drogheda down to the south of the country. We have this climate change and climate action debate in these Houses on a regular basis. The one key message is the bringing of people with us and having buy-in from the community. However, people are watching such ridiculous nonsensical activities as the importation of peat from eastern Europe. Harvesting it out there is having the same effect on the environment and climate as doing it here but then the diesel-burning ships and lorries taking it to and from the port must be taken into account. It just does not make sense. We have been putting on political pressure and we will continue to do so. As GMI said in its submission, it seems to have fallen between the cracks by virtue of there being numerous different Departments, which are able to push the blame, for want of a better word, onto each other. Somebody must step up to the plate and make a decision. I have a couple of quick questions.

I am thinking about how we get a resolution to this going forward. The GMI submission is prescriptive on the alternatives being examined or developed at the moment. In this situation, as in others, just transition has gone out the window and we have put the cart before the horse. We have stopped the peat and now we are talking about scientific experiments and the development of alternatives. However, of the ones GMI has listed, aside from composting and green waste, none of them seem to be Irish. It would be an import scenario for all of them even if they were up to scratch.

Will the witnesses elaborate a little on green waste? When I saw the heading I thought this was the solution but there are issues and problems with it that GMI has identified. I would like to hear how we might be able to tweak some of them because it seems to be the only real alternative mentioned, from an Irish perspective.

I would also like to know about a mixture of one or other of the alternatives and peat. If we were going to table saying that going forward, we will only need a percentage of what we did in the past, it might be easier to get a green light. Is there the possibility of using mixtures of any or all of the alternatives GMI has mentioned?

This might be a stupid question but we are here to ask the questions. Is there any possibility of recycling peat between different sector of the industry? Maybe peat that has been used in horticulture could then go to the mushroom industry or vice versa.

I am trying to come up with a strengthened case for minimising the volume of peat that would need to be harvested to keep the sector viable, going forward. As things stand at the moment what percentage of peat is the industry getting from Bord na Móna, from the private sector, or both, when it comes to harvesting? To conclude, it is now July, so even if there was a solution to this issue and the green light was given for peat harvesting by the close of business today, have we missed a harvesting season?