Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies for their contributions and I will try to answer some of the questions raised. First, turning to Deputy Naughten, the purpose of this amendment is to allow the sort of projects that Bord na Móna is now looking at in terms of bog rehabilitation, rewetting bogs and storing carbon within the bogs. It is specifically those sorts of projects. My predecessor, Deputy Bruton, the Deputy and other predecessors supported that approach and I am glad to ensure we deliver it here.

On the level of employment, I have seen some figures and I have been encouraged that there is employment here. We do not have the specifics yet and we will have to wait for the fund applications to come in, but there are real employment opportunities for Bord na Móna because the skills involved in this area are the exact skills that the workers in this company have in terms of logistics, managing bogs and the energy and expertise to manage the natural landscape. It will vary. The issue in terms of managing the bogs in this way is that every bog is different and requires site-specific knowledge and different engineering solutions and mechanisms to deliver the right answer.

On what the Deputy said about workers looking for redundancy, I will ask the officials to reply directly to him to outline why it might be the case that workers would be availing of the wage subsidy scheme while at the same time be looking for voluntary redundancy where the State could pay them in that way. I will commit to doing this.

On the stores and stocks of milled peat on the bog between-----

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