Naoise Ó Cearúil (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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492. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his Department's plans to support peatland restoration and enhance biodiversity through sustainable agricultural practices; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28576/25]

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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My Department is focused on tackling climate change, protecting the environment and maintaining biodiversity, as well as ensuring farmer’s livelihoods and the family farm model of agriculture is protected and sustainable here in Ireland.

One of the priorities for my Department is to ensure that we continue to make progress on reducing emissions from land use by the improved management of organic soils. The quality of our water and biodiversity are also affected by how we manage our peat soils.

At farm level, Ireland's flagship €1.5 billion-euro agri-environmental scheme ACRES, contains approaches to facilitate peatland restoration. ACRES has facilitated an estimated area of ca. 560,000 hectares of peatland scoring across private peatland, commonage peatland, low input peat grassland (private land) and low input peat grassland (commonage). Most of this is typical upland blanket bog or lowland Atlantic bog (Western Blanket bogs). ACRES facilitates the provision of a suite of actions, some of which specifically target active peatland restoration.

My Department has funded several European Innovation Projects, including FarmPEAT and Farm Carbon which operated as locally led, innovative, results-based farm schemes for farmers who manage lands that surround some of Ireland's finest remaining raised bogs.

My Department is fully committed to working with farmers, farm organisations, and other stakeholders to support peatland restoration and enhance biodiversity through sustainable agricultural practices. Ultimately, incomes of current and future generations of farmers must be protected whilst meeting national and EU environmental targets.