Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To respond, I assume from the answer the Senator has given that she has not asked or had discussions with her own colleagues about drafting primary legislation to make the consent a single process as opposed to a dual process. Changing the law might have challenges but it certainly would be an action to show the industry we are trying to do something to alleviate the problems it has. The Minister of State referred to "beyond peat", the "path to the future", and to alternatives and also to the fact that I said it was not fair to say that the recommendations of the Prasad report were not implemented. She did not do Nos.1 to 6 of the recommendations and we waited until No. 7 which was the easy one and was given a grant to investigate what the future might look like for peat alternatives. Recommendation No. 3 of the Prasad report states:

In order to facilitate peat producers, primary legislation should be drafted by the relevant Government Departments in order to move from the current dual consent system [...] to a single consent system.

That is the answer to all of the problems we have heard for the past two years from this industry. We are no further on in fixing the problem because politically and ideologically we have a problem with Government providing a proper legal framework to allow people to extract peat. It is the God's honest truth and the Minister of State knows it, that we would rather let people say we want them to comply with the law which cannot be complied with. The dual consent process is unworkable and will never produce any peat for the horticultural industry in this country. I say it again as my closing remarks; we are killing off the most climate-friendly industry in this country slowly and it is happening on our watch.