Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

With the Chair's indulgence, I will have a bit of a rant. We are in danger of this committee becoming a glorified group therapy support forum in that members are listening to problems we have heard many times and to concerns we all share, while the people and Departments that can assist in resolving those concerns are refusing to engage. It is absolutely scandalous. I stand to be corrected but in my reckoning representatives of the horticultural and mushroom sectors have told this committee on six different occasions that they are facing an existential crisis. They have told us there is no credible current alternative to the use of peat in their sectors. It is important to note that this evidence has never been challenged in any of the deliberations the committee has had. Nobody has given oral or written evidence to this committee suggesting there is a current credible alternative to horticultural peat.

We have been repeatedly told that the likely outcome of the industry being unable to access cultivated peat domestically is that we will lose aspects of the horticultural mushroom sectors, as they close down and their products are produced elsewhere, or we will see growing peat imports. This is the scenario that is currently evolving and it is the exact opposite of environmentalism. In fact, it is tokenism at its worst.

Earlier today, I read through some of the committee's reports and the transcripts of previous meetings. Since this committee started deliberating on this matter, it is fair to say we have encountered obstruction and obstacles at every turn. This is not the first time Departments have refused to come to talk to us on this issue. Throughout this process, three Departments have essential been in hiding. We held hearings on the matter and produced a report on which the Government then refused to engage with us. Instead it established a working group and refused to engage with us throughout the time the group sat, arguing that it had to wait until the report was finished. The working group produced a report which the Government refused to share for some time, all the while saying it would not engage with the committee until the report had been published. When the report was published the Government then simply ignored it. In a stroke of genius, somebody in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, probably aided and abetted by somebody in the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, managed to place the onus on the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, which does not have any power to propose the legislative changes the commissioned reports indicated were necessary. What we got instead was a pathetic working paper that completely ignored the recommendations of the reports produced by this committee and the Government's working group. The only measurable thing that it could be said the Government achieved was to put an onus on Bord na Móna to provide access to its stocks of horticultural peat. Representatives of Bord na Móna then appeared before the committee and told us it had signed an exclusive deal with an Israeli company, basically making its stockpiles inaccessible to the producers. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine then proceeded to commission a KPMG report on opportunities for the Irish horticulture sector. I do not know how much that cost but, guess what, it made exactly the same recommendations as the working group report and the committee's report. Since then, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, which I understand is the only Department that could bring forward the legislative change that is required, has refused to meet the committee. Its officials have sent us an email basically stating that this is a matter for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The latter has stated it will meet us, but not just yet, maybe at the end of the month. Last night, a Minister of State and, by my count, ten officials from that Department appeared before this committee to discuss legislation it is trying to push through, even though it does not know what the Bill will say when it is passed. If the Department decided this was a priority, it could definitely deal with it.

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is being treated like a mudguard and I am shocked that the Minister is accepting that. I noted Mr. Dunne cited the Ministers of State, Senator Hackett and Deputy Noonan, and the Minister, Deputy Ryan, and there is nothing he said about any of them that I disagree with. However, Mr. Dunne missed a key component in all of those because I genuinely believe the only way this issue will be resolved is if the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, takes the mantle that has been handed to him by the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to say this a matter for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and insists his Department bring forward legislation that is in line with the recommendations of all three reports, namely, to provide a mechanism whereby peat can be temporarily cultivated for the exclusive use of the domestic horticulture and mushroom sectors until such stage as a credible alternative is in place. It is in that vein that I will be proposing that this committee invite the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, to come to our meeting alongside his officials. Otherwise, we will keep going around in circles. We will have these people or their colleagues coming before us in a number of months' time and they all will tell us the problem is getting worse, they are importing more, the costs are going up and it is starting to have an impact on sectors.

As I have said on many occasions on this committee, if there was an alternative to horticultural peat, I would be telling our guests to sling their hooks because we must try to protect our bogs, but there is nothing protecting the environment or reducing emissions when we are importing substantial amounts of peat from places where we have no eye whatsoever on what type of regulations are in place. We are importing peat over thousands of miles, with hundreds of trucks transporting it right across the Continent of Europe, onto ships and into Ireland. It is lunacy. As I say, it is counterproductive.

I had a number of questions to ask our guests. They probably have answered most of them or, if they have not, we have heard the answers before because we know what the solution is. To do what I am supposed to do and ask a question, I will ask the following.