Dr. Catherine Farrell:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak this afternoon about peatlands and, specifically, their restoration. Ireland is a global hotspot for peatlands, with over 20% of the national territory covered by peatland or peat soils. Peatlands are valuable ecosystems that form a significant part of the Irish sociocultural landscape. Healthy peatlands are wetlands, characterised by complex interactions between three main factors, namely, water, biodiversity and peat. Tweak one of these components and we effect change in the living system, making them more vulnerable to natural hazards and climate change at the same time.

There are four main types of peatland in Ireland. These are raised bogs, mountain bogs, lowland blanket bogs and fens. Each has characteristic features that arise from local climate and geography. Understanding their past and how they have been used and changed through our activities is key to their restoration and their future.

Healthy peatlands deliver an array of services to people, including control of water flows, water purification, climate regulation and biodiversity. It is the complex web of relationships between water, biodiversity and peat that creates the peatland, maintains it and allows the peatland to store vastvolumes of carbon while also acting as a sink for carbon dioxide. Peatlands have been regulating our climate for millennia and although globally peatlands cover only 3% of the Earth’s land surface, they store about double the amount of carbon as is stored in all forests, which cover a ten times greater area.

Healthy peatlands are therefore, without a doubt, incredibly important for our well-being. Changing the water regime by draining, utilising peatlands for timber crops or wind farms or digging out the valuable carbon stock will change the peatland. Our activities have already changed peatlands. The truth is that few pockets of healthy peatlands remain in Ireland, functioning as they should. Peatlands have been changed into sources of carbon dioxide rather than valuable carbon stores and sinks.

Over a quarter of the total area of peatland in Ireland has been drained for grassland and approximately one third has been developed for forestry, with a significant portion of the raised bogs converted to industrial extraction. The remainder comprises commonages and turbary areas. Most of these areas are today acting as sources of carbon dioxide, as well as contributing to poor water quality and loss of biodiversity. The desolate and barren industrial bogscapes of the midlands, the devastating bog slides in Leitrim, Donegal and Kerry in 2020 and the recent fires in Killarney are all legacies of our neglect of these vulnerable ecosystems and are set to continue unless we take action. Restoration, therefore, is essential in order to stabilise peatlands, reverse degradation and bring peatlands back to healthy status.

Every peatland is different and successful restoration requires an understanding at site and catchment level. Passive rewilding is not an option here and active restoration measures are required. The key measures bring us back to our water, biodiversity and peat equation and must be tailored for each site. Above all, rewetting is critical to get peatland plants back in place and reduce peat breakdown. Peat loss equates to carbon loss. Once initial restoration has been carried out, time and aftercare, or a watchful eye, are necessary.

Key to all these steps is people. I mentioned in my opening lines that peatlands are a significant Irish sociocultural landscape. Real, genuine and long-term engagement is required from and with landowners and adjoining neighbours, and a switch towards community-led restoration can ensure long-term success.

In terms of Irish experience, seminal work was initiated by Dutch researchers in the 1980s in partnership with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, and since that time, the NPWS, Coillte and Bord na Móna have carried out targeted site level works with plenty of scope to increase in that area. In recent years, European Innovation Partnership projects such as the hen harrier and pearl mussel projects have been breaking new ground, engaging farming communities to alleviate pressures and encourage restorative measures. Non-governmental organisations such as BirdWatch Ireland and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, along with community groups across Ireland, are leading the charge in conserving and restoring peatlands, as evidenced by the increasing membership of the community wetlands forum.

Given the extent of peatlands in Ireland, their current widespread degradation and their significant role in climate regulation, peatland restoration is one of a number of nature-based solutions, if not the number one such solution, to the biodiversity and climate crises in Ireland. In 2021, the dawn of the UN decade on restoration, we must embrace the potential of our peatlands for what they can naturally deliver. Peatlands in the Irish landscape are unbounded and there are rarely fences or gates around them. Equally, peatlands are multisectoral, with policies for agriculture, climate, energy, the environment, forestry, nature and water management affecting their use. We need a multisectoral approach and instead of draining, digging and planting, we must change our perspectives to enact restoration solutions, creating the policy and economic structure to support this.

A national peatlands unit is required to inform, co-ordinate and execute an action plan to support sustainable peatlands for the people who rely on them and look after them, and equally for water, biodiversity and climate. Peatlands take time to heal but inaction is not an option. We must simply roll up our sleeves and work together across sectors to do it. I thank the committee for its time and look forward to taking questions from members.