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Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Jackie Cahill: On behalf of the committee, I thank Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, and Mr. Lucas for engaging with us on this important issue. The message from the committee is very clear. The importation of peat into this country is both environmental and financial lunacy. Before the next peat harvesting season starts, we need to be able to harvest peat here for our horticulture and nursery...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Malcolm Noonan: Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil leis an gcoiste. I thank the committee for its time this afternoon. Peatlands have been one of the most abiding features of the Irish landscape since the last ice age. They cover a large area of the land surface, occurring as raised bogs, blanket bogs and fens. Peatlands have a key biodiversity value and provide a range of ecosystem services....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Victor Boyhan: ...Irish Times. There were two articles relating to these matters. My phone was hopping at 9 o'clock in response to those articles. The timescale to find a practical and ecological alternative to peat must be reasonable and realistic. I am not sure the times the Minister of State has set out to 2030 or 2035 are realistic, sustainable or appropriate given the difficulties faced by the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Joe Flaherty: I thank the Minister for coming in. I am aware our peatlands are an important ecosystem. I was lucky enough to grow up in the bog and I am lucky enough to still live on the edge of the bog. I value and appreciate what the bog did for us as a young family when we were growing up. I am appreciative of the people who worked on the bogs of Ireland over the years. We were warned time and again...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Matt Carthy: ...and rural communities. He also said he was disappointed at the importation witnessed today. Does the Minister of State accept that, at present, there is no alternative to the extraction of peat for many sectors of the horticultural industry? I refer, as I have done on multiple occasions, to the mushroom industry which is of particular importance in my constituency. Stockpiles are...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Michael Collins: ...am asking have already been asked. Deputy Leddin said this is not a matter of the green agenda, but it is certainly an extraordinary situation we find ourselves in with regard to both forestry and peat and the Green Party is at the helm. We see the disaster that is unfolding. Some Minister somewhere along the line is unable to resolve this unfolding disaster for many people in the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Malcolm Noonan: ...the green agenda. It is not the green agenda; it is the law. That is the reality of this. My Department, which has responsibility for heritage, has no role in this except in the sense that the peatlands strategy, specifically recommendation No. 5 of the strategy, was to establish this working group to look at alternatives. We took up that challenge in September 2020 and acted very...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

...have not yet been signed off by party leaders. Obviously then, I am limited in the kind of detail I can go into, but the type of thing in the paper would include looking at whether stocks of peat are available which may not have been looked at up to now and could be made suitable for use by the industry; the potential to make equipment, mixing plants and expertise available to assist the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Danny Healy-Rae: ...against them at all - but it is clear to me they are pulling the strings in government. They ensured Bord na Móna was closed down six years before it was destined to close down. There was moss peat left behind in Bord na Móna in the middle of the country. The Government is saying there are alternatives for nurseries in Kerry and for the horticulture sector. We are not even...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Paul Daly: ...they are from, are a rehash of working group and interim reports. All the time, there is an industry on its knees and there is the contradiction of the carbon leakage that is the importation of peat when we have peat here. Irrespective of your political allegiance or feelings on the environment, we are all well intentioned in that regard and we all have the same agenda, including the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Jackie Cahill: The first session of today's meeting is on the impact of peat shortages on the horticultural industry. I welcome the Minister of State with responsibility for heritage and electoral reform at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Noonan. He is joining us from a witness room in Kildare House. He is joined from the Department by Mr. Brian Lucas, who is joining...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

...of the Environment, Climate and Communications indicated to the committee that following the route of a single consent regime would not allow for an earlier resumption of large-scale or commercial peat extraction than through engaging with the current dual consent system. Deputy Kehoe referred to harvesting a small amount of peat. I ask what we mean by "a small amount of peat". The...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Paul Kehoe: I welcome the Minister of State and his officials. I do not want to repeat some of what the other speakers have stated but I fully concur with their thoughts on this issue. I know we are all very interested in the green agenda, but I can tell the Minister of State that it is getting a huge amount of negativity since we are not able to sort out what I believe is a small issue but a major...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Martin Browne: As Senator Daly pointed out, many of the questions have been asked already. To see a shipment of just under 4,000 tonnes of peat come into the country at the weekend was crazy. As Deputy Carthy said, it is not just about 200 trucks in Ireland because another 200 trucks had to load that product over in Latvia and it also travelled 3,000 miles by sea. All sectors of Irish horticulture will...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Malcolm Noonan: ...amount of time regardless. I give our commitment and that of the Government that we will continue to work collectively to try to move towards those alternatives. There are nurseries out there using peat alternatives, and there nurseries throughout the world and growers in other areas that are able to use peat alternatives. There are options. I reiterate the point raised by Deputy...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Michael Fitzmaurice: ...with responsibility for climate and they were the most arrogant person ever to come before a committee. They basically said straight out that part of the solution is going to be importing peat. Anyone with any environmental brain in their head will know bringing peat 200 km to a boat, 3,000 km on the boat and then having 200 lorry loads of it going up and down the country is complete...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticultural Industry: Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (21 Sep 2021)

Malcolm Noonan: ...Irish context. In saying this, I address Deputy Carthy as well. It was never my preference for importation to be an option. It is certainly a less favourable option environmentally when quality peat exists in this country but the law is the law. We have to try to figure out a solution that works in an Irish context. We have spoken about the issue Deputy Fitzmaurice raised, that of...