Matt Cooper

Well,

I guess they notice, and for example, the EPA, whose job it is to notice these things, they compiled dossiers on 38 sample sites.

These are of the smaller ones, below the 50 hectare threshold.

They compiled these dossiers, they sent them to seven local authorities, Offaly, Westmeath, Roscommon, Tipperary, Longford, Kildare and Sligo.

And the total enforcement actions arising from the EPA sending these detailed dossiers, Matt?

Zero.

Not one single local authority was prepared to act.

Now, they came up with a whole bunch of reasons why they won't act.

They say they don't have the expertise, they haven't the financial resources.

Now, they had the financial resources and the expertise to rightly, by the way, demolish an illegally built house in recent months.

Yet, this wide-scale illegal peat mining is happening.

It is happening in full public glare.

And there are no, there's no squad cars at the end of those laneways saying, you know, where's your permit?

Where's your license?

And you have your local politicians.

And of course, many of our rural TDs are four square behind this illegality, pretending, for example, number one, that it isn't happening.

And number two, if it is happening, sure, it is just a small local thing with a few fellas trying to get a few sods of turf for the family.

This is the kind of nonsense that we hear from some of our rural TDs in defending localities

gross illegality.

And the issue here, Matt, is that Ireland again is disgraced at European level.