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

No one can justify peat coming from another country. That is the first thing.

The fact of the matter is that horticulture, the mushroom industry and domestic turf cutting do not use even 1% of the bogs of Ireland. People go on about re-wetting and sequestering carbon but it would take approximately 50 years to do Bord na Móna's holdings and others that are not being used. We are not going to do all of this overnight. Under the habitats directive, the target timeframe to bring back degraded lands is 30 years and you have to work on it for longer after that. You leave that and take the lower-hanging fruit.

I will be clear on one issue and state publicly what I am thinking. I have dealt with many Departments regarding bogs. In fairness to the Chair, he has put a lot of effort into this issue, just as he has with forestry. As a person who has been involved with bogs for years, I believe that there should be an exemption for sites under 30 ha. We have to be clear on this. That will not work everywhere that there is a hydrological separation. If legislation is being prepared, it should include a buffer zone of 100 m or 150 m outside of that in which it is understood that there may be some loss of water. Do the witnesses understand me? Would a solution like that work for their organisations? I understand that companies such as Klasmann-Deilmann and others can own very large areas of bog but I am asking about sites under 30 ha. It must also be understood that my plot could be stuck onto someone else's so we need to provide for a buffer. I have seen the hydrology done on sites like these and on high banks. The bogs I am talking about would be about 14 spit deep when cut with a sleán, so they are fairly deep. That can be seen when tests are done on them. A lot of people are talking about bogs but do not understand them. Many of these so-called experts think they know everything but they know damn all. The surface under a bog goes up and down and these people do not understand that not all the water will flow in one direction. I cut a bog once and we were going into it downhill. Water will not flow up a hill. You have to understand all of these things about a bog. Every bog is different, as is the make-up of what is under it. Some will have sandy stuff and some will have lock. All of them are different.

We have done a lot of work on resolving the issue of turf-cutting bogs and designated bogs. We are working constructively with the National Parks and Wildlife Service. The service had achieved a lot by re-wetting but Europe has tried to throw a spanner in the works in the past week, although we will deal with that in our own time. Would my proposal be a workable solution for the likes of this committee? I have no problem going into any of the Departments with the Chair or anyone else to try to find resolutions but the Minister has to give the go-ahead. We cannot keep hiding. It is as simple as that.