Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Dr. Lanigan referred to peat soils earlier. I worked on the raised bog, raised bog habitat and so forth. Every area is different. Dr. Lanigan said Teagasc is doing 30 areas in the country. With the best will in the world, I know Teagasc cannot be everywhere to even trace where active raised bog habitat is in some bogs and even in the blanket bogs - and the witness is correct in saying that they regenerate much quicker - but we need to be careful about some of the things we say. I have seen analyses done on 53 raised bogs and they were all different. We need to be careful about what we say they are emitting because it might not be accurate. It could be a totally different scale.

On top of that, we need to find scientific solutions. One of the witnesses spoke about re-wetting and so forth. It is a brave politician who will tell half of the west of Ireland, the northern part of the country or County Kerry to pull out the cows and re-wet the land. Realistically, that is not going to happen, so we need to come up with solutions for how to ensure that people can earn their living and so forth. When we were talking to the departmental officials earlier, in fairness to them they said the carrot is that they will offer things to people who want to take the road of re-wetting but they were absolutely clear that nobody was going to be pushed.

We would end up with two thirds of the country being able to farm properly while one third would basically be the sink for everyone else. That is not going to happen. We need to concentrate on solutions for working with those farmers, especially in peaty areas. People cannot do much about where they are farming.

What is the story on marly or lochy land? Do the witnesses consider such land? This is poorish-quality land. There is a layer in that where the permeability is totally different from peaty land.