Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thought the environment was a world problem. Whether peat is got in Latvia or any other country, does it make any difference? Why should we import a product that we have in plentiful supply in this country? I have listened to this debate and I listened to other debates. The guests are welcome. Their industry has been attacked, like a lot of other industries around this country, because of decisions being made by politicians. Deputy Kehoe spoke earlier about officials and the Chairman mentioned officials coming in at short notice. The reason the officials do not want to come in today is because there is no political leadership in this. The political leadership in this is that they do not want peat to be produced in this country. We have a daft situation where we are bringing in peat from Latvia. I fell over a bale of briquettes the other day that came in from another country, and us with more peat in this country than any place else in the world. If it is going to be taken out of some place else in the world, would we not be well to take it out in Ireland? We will have to make political decisions today when this meeting is over. We are going to have to talk. This is a political issue that needs to be dealt with because we will have more problems down the line if this continues. I am getting sick and tired of the direction we are going in. I was not that in favour of voting for the Bill last week. It was either do that or get out of the party and that may have to come at that stage as well.

The detail in that has not yet been produced but when it is, it will hurt the Chairman and many other Members. There may come a time when we have to say enough is enough. Enough is enough with peat. Peat should be harvested in Ireland, sold in Ireland and produced in Ireland. Our guests from GMI do not ask the State for anything. They employ 17,000 people nationally in jobs we need in rural Ireland.

I did some canvassing in Dublin over the past two weeks and learned that there are two different Irelands. The city Ireland does not really understand rural Ireland and never will. Too many people in government now are from city Ireland and do not understand rural Ireland.