Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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8. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the engagement he has had with the mushroom and horticultural sectors on the changes to the harvesting of horticultural peat; and the provisions he is preparing to support the sector. [27066/21]

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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I want the Minister to outline the engagements he has had with the members of the horticulture and mushroom sectors since the ban on horticultural peat harvesting and to address the level of dismay within the sector, given the impact of this ban and how they feel abandoned by the Minister and the Department.

Pippa Hackett (Green Party)
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It should be noted at the outset that my Department has no role in the regulation or control of peat extraction. However, I am very aware of the current dependence of the horticultural industry on the availability of peat moss.

Following on from the publication of a report on the review of the use of peat moss in the horticulture industry by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the Minister of State, Deputy Malcolm Noonan, set up a working group to consider impacts on the sector. It is proposed that this working group, representing Departments, including my Department, State agencies, environmental NGOs and industry stakeholders, will address the issues raised in the report, including the future use of peat in the horticulture sector. I am pleased to say the first meeting of the independent working group took place on 4 March and it has met regularly since.

My Department, through the Horticulture Industry Forum, engages with the horticulture sector on an ongoing basis. As recently as 20 April, I co-chaired a Horticulture Industry Forum meeting where the challenges and opportunities facing the industry were discussed. At a broader level, the Department provides support to the horticulture industry through the scheme of investment aid for the development of the horticulture sector. Financial support is available to assist growers and businesses through grant aid for capital investments in specialised plant and equipment, including renewable energy, as well as technology adoption specific to commercial horticulture production. A 50% budget increase to €9 million has been secured for 2021, which reflects the importance of the sector and the importance we are placing on it. The scheme is 100% funded by the Government. In addition, the Department administers the EU producer organisation scheme for fruit and vegetables, which allows growers to jointly market their production in order to strengthen the position of producers in the marketplace.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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Like other Members, the Minister of State will have heard the valid concerns about livelihoods in the sector because it is being targeted. The workers themselves are saying that the Ministers of State, Deputy Hackett and Deputy Noonan, have a fixed position on the issue of bogs and will do nothing more for the workers affected, and they say the just transition does not reach them. They are not being supported and they feel they have been abandoned. As a result, there are businesses in my constituency that are now sourcing horticultural peat from Scotland, Estonia and elsewhere. For a sector that accounts for a minuscule amount of all the peat harvested here, how can the Minister of State say, given the emissions involved in continuously importing an inferior product from abroad, that this is the more environmentally friendly way of moving forward? We know the suggested alternatives are produced in ways that fall below our environmental standards. Even Teagasc has said the only current alternative to get horticultural peat is to import it and that any other alternative is at least ten years away. In fact, there is no guarantee there will be suitable alternatives.

Pippa Hackett (Green Party)
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The Deputy's question relates to mushrooms and the wider horticulture sector. The decision by Bord na Móna to cease harvesting has directly affected the sector. The mushroom industry does not tend to acquire peat from Bord na Móna, so it has a slightly different problem, albeit we are going to reach a stage at some time in the future when nobody will be using peat for horticulture, certainly across Europe, and in the wider world. Therefore, the Deputy is correct that there is a necessity to have a just transition to facilitate growers to move away from this growing medium to another more sustainable source. That is something I hope the working group formed by the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, will be looking at, although it is specifically looking at the horticulture sector, not the wider peat extraction piece.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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There is a nursery in Dundrum in my constituency where the owner cares for 1 million CO2 absorbing plants a year, and I am sure the working group will hear similar stories. He told me yesterday he was glad he has only ten more years in the business when the people who should be looking after it have no interest in it. He has had to source horticultural peat from Scotland and Estonia, and costs have risen from €24 per cu. m to €37, and there are also the emissions involved in importing it. It is like the forestry sector. How do we expect to attract new entrants into this market, which is valuable in terms of carbon sequestration, when the sector has been left to wither? Are we going to become a country that is a net importer of horticultural peat or, instead, are we going to import mushrooms and reverse the situation in which our mushroom industry employs more than 3,000 people and exports more than 80% of its products to the UK?

This is how the future looks for the mushroom sector which, if the current policy persists, may very well move to the Continent altogether. We must be realistic. The harvesting of horticultural peat is so minuscule.

Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Deputy Martin Browne has raised the fundamental question here. At the moment there is no viable alternative and certainly no environmentally sustainable alternative to use of horticultural peat in the mushroom industry. The Deputy mentioned 3,000 jobs. These are concentrated in counties like my own county of Monaghan where there are very few alternative economic drivers for the local economy. Therefore, the alternatives to the use of domestic horticultural peat are that we continue to import peat from outside the State, that we export our mushroom industry or that flexibility is shown to allow a sector like that to use domestic peat. The volume needed for this use is a fraction of what was needed for energy production. In the wider scheme of things, we are talking about very small quantities of peat that will actually keep a vibrant and crucially important element of our rural economy going. Which one of those three is the Minister of State willing to pursue?

Pippa Hackett (Green Party)
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I accept what both Deputies are saying and that this is tiny portion compared to what we have extracted over the decades for energy production and so forth. Those are the questions the working group has been charged with and I am hoping to get some answers from it on this. As I said, the group reports to the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, but certainly it is directly affecting the horticulture sector. It is untrue in a sense to say there are no alternatives because there are, although they are not available at the scale required for the commercial horticulture sector. However, there are, for example, some commercial organic growers who are peat free, so there is scope. There is work and research being done on this but, again, it is about implementing measures over the next number of years to help our sector transition out of peat. Peat extraction must stop but horticulture must continue and that is what I will endeavour to support people in.