Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There will be no restrictions on people who own their own bogs and use turf in their domestic fire or share it with neighbours. There is no ban on the gifting of peat by those with rights to harvest sod peat.

What Deputy McDonald needs to be very careful of is the fact that the big issue here is the coal industry; that is the big villain of the piece here. Back in the early 1990s, the former Minister Mary Harney introduced a ban on smoky coal that was transformative in terms of air quality in this city and other large cities around the country but I noticed that in her presentation Deputy McDonald did not mention air quality once. It is about time now that people played this fair, down the middle and had a balanced debate on it because unfortunately, there are areas around the country which are above WHO levels in terms of poor air quality and that is not acceptable. We have to take that on board. Ireland was above the European Environmental Agency, EEA, reference levels for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, a toxic chemical, at four monitoring sites due to the burning of solid fuels.

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