Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Senator Pippa Hackett):

I would like to assure the Deputy that we are fully aware of the issues in respect of horticultural peat and the difficulty it is causing the sector. It is worth saying that currently there is no indication that supplies for the domestic horticulture sector will run out for either amenity horticulture or the mushroom sector. As the Deputy is aware, they require two distinct types of peat. Supply is being sourced within Ireland and is also being imported. It is worth drawing some attention to the CSO figures in respect of peat imports and exports. While they do not differentiate between the types of peat, between January and December 2020 we imported about - I cannot work it out - 10,000 or 10 million tonnes of peat - and we exported nearly 990,000 tonnes of peat. We exported 90 times more than we imported. In 2021, we imported 46,000 tonnes of peat and exported 579,000 tonnes. This year between January and July we imported 26,000 tonnes of peat and exported 260,000 tonnes of peat.

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