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

The Minister of State will know there are some horticultural sectors, and I am thinking of the mushroom industry in particular, that need peat to survive. I hope an alternative to peat can be found and I would urge that efforts be intensified in that regard. For years we had the scandalous situation in this State of hundreds and thousands of units of peat being extracted from Irish land and exported. Now we have the scandalous situation whereby hundreds and thousands of units of peat will be imported from other parts of Europe. Both are hypocritical positions. After an awful lot of procrastination, we eventually got a working paper. I am sceptical about its breadth but I would like to know what the progress has been and what has been done about the implementation of that working paper.

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