Billy Kelly

My name is Billy Kelly.

I'm from Kelly's Nursery Limited Mullingar and we grow trees and hedging for the Irish and English market.

How long have you been doing that?

For 30 years.

How many do you employ?

We employ 35 full-time, 20 part-time people.

How important is peat in doing what you do?

It's extremely important and I don't believe there is a viable alternative.

In compliance with legislation we have reduced our peat percentage in our compost.

We are now 35-40% peat free.

We're using wood fibre and we are using bark as an alternative.

but we have found once we cross the 40 to 50 percent barrier it's very very difficult to produce crops so we need to have at least 50 percent peat in our compost so what's the problem you end up with irregular or inconsistent sized plants inconsistent crops and maybe not as glossy of foliage as what we would like to have uneven growth a product that our customers aren't happy with the quality

and we have been trying over the years and always been experimenting on various options.

I think if we have a safe alternative product locally, I think that's what we should stick with.

It might be a safe product, but you know what the problems with harvesting peat are.

I understand all of the concerns, but given that since we've stopped burning it in power stations, etc., that was accounting for 90% of the harvest.

The horticultural industry is using less than half of 1% of what had been harvested 10 years ago.