Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the Chamber. Throughout last year and this year, Growing Media Ireland and the Irish Farmers' Association, IFA, on behalf of horticultural peat producers, highlighted the many substitutes to peat, but said that, in 2021, there is not a sufficient quantity of alternatives available that are affordable, sustainable and of the quality required. They said that removing peat-based growing media would damage our food and horticultural sectors. They highlighted how the sector faces a shutdown and that stock supplies would be exhausted by summer 2021, unless we introduce legislation to allow previously exempted peat harvesting to resume subject to licences, allow for an orderly exit from the industry and work to ensure a just transition for all in the industry, including compensation for loss of earnings, training and a process to rehabilitate boglands. They provided figures that state the industry covers 0.12% of the total area of Irish peatlands and employs 6,600 full-time staff, including 11,000 others in associated businesses, and contributed 0.15% of the projected annual carbon emissions for 2020. However, nothing happened and we remain in this current situation. Last month some 4,000 tonnes of peat were imported from Latvia, loaded into 200 trucks that burned diesel on a 3,000 km journey in order to bring it to a destination - local to me and the Minister of State - on the Longford-Westmeath border. It now sits in piles just metres away from a bog that could have produced the same quantity, but better quality, and would not have had as big an impact on our carbon footprint, while the same bog emits carbon whether or not we extract peat. When I considered that while preparing this contribution, I thought of "GUBU", the term that originated in Irish politics a number of years ago; it is "unbelievable" and "bizarre" that this has been allowed to happen.