Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Ms Byrne, Ms Fay and Ms Wisdom to the committee.

I think the Minister of State will feel the sense of frustration in the committee. Clearly, three Ministers and three Departments are overlapping and while I understand the reason for that, they do not operate in a silo. They are in government and the Ministers and Ministers of State have cross functions and support and co-operate with one another. What is important is that for months we had difficulty getting anyone to appear before the committee. I do not know what the background to that is.

I must express some concern, in line with what Deputy Fitzmaurice said, that it is unusual to receive correspondence on the day of a meeting. It is not right. It is disrespectful to the committee and I would like to hear why we are looking at a statement from the Minister of State today. I always like to read statements and prepare before meetings so I can bring something to the table. I am somewhat shocked by the content, so much so that I printed some other material. It is literally a cut-and-paste job. Many of the sentences in this briefing note connected with peat and other documents are dropped into the Minister of State's speech. I was reading it this morning and realised I had read it before somewhere. Whole sections are dropped back in here that were in previous documents. I know it is the same matter but I make the point and it raises the question as to why it took so long. Members like to read documents in advance. They like to prepare and ask questions. We were denied the opportunity to do so for today's meeting, which is unprecedented in all of my time as a member of the committee.

I will move on. I will focus on peat and the horticultural sector, in particular the mushroom sector. Much of our mushroom sector is located in County Monaghan and other Border counties, as well as County Wexford and other places. Peat can be brought across the Border from Northern Ireland. Many producers have said they might be better off moving north in this industry. We have a successful horticultural mushroom industry. The Minister of State will know there are three or four big players in the sector. There are many smaller players that are on contract to the bigger suppliers because they have critical mass in transport costs and other issues so it makes sense. It works well. Many small family-owned companies are involved in mushroom production and we sometimes forget that. The big players are at the front but the smaller ones are feeding into that on contract.

On the issue of peat, we clearly know we need a phased transition to alternatives to peat. I am delighted the Minister of State indicated that we are making progress in terms of Teagasc and alternatives for mushroom production. I would like to hear a little more about that. The Minister of State spoke about hope and the expectation that we will have alternatives and that is encouraging. I am delighted to hear that but it must be high quality, environmentally-friendly peat. We must deal with many factors. As previous speakers said, the committee expected a roadmap today, not more of the same talk about what might be happening.

What are we talking about? The Minister of State represents a rural constituency which is also in the heartland of peat. I fully understand that. I do not doubt her personal, political or community commitment to just transition but we have an issue and it is about rural communities, jobs, the economy, the horticultural sector and the agrifood sector that the Minister of State, her party and the Government talk about often. Members who are involved in the horticultural sector, agrifood business and mushroom sector want to know what the phased transition period is.

What are the phased transition alternatives? Where are we going in terms of an answer? We need a Minister in here once a month - it is a matter we can discuss in private in our committee another day. Every 30 days, we want a report on our table in this committee in relation to where we are going. It is not good enough to ask parliamentary questions or Commencement matters in the Seanad or having long, protracted engagement to try to get a Minister to come and talk about it. I understand that the Minister of State knows the difficulties and the challenges. Will she touch on where the phased transition is at? What good news can she bring us today? Can she bring us something new that we did not already know about how we are going to address this challenge?