Michael Miley

And he doesn't need us interrupting him.

Well, everywhere else has, so why not the Midlands?

And it's not like we don't have the high nature value land.

None with raised bog.

We have no deep peat national park.

Plenty on blanket bog.

Wonderful Glenveigh in Donegal, Killarney in the south-west, Connemara.

We have none on deep peat.

And this is the tragedy of the situation.

The Habitats Directive came out in 1992, and one of the priorities in that was to designate

raised bogs.

The state, through Bòrd na Móna, galloped ahead, exploiting bogs as fast as they could.

In fact, 2003 was the year of peak peat production for Bòrd na Móna, years after the Habitats Directive.

And in the last minute, the state was forced to stop peat cutting in 2020 through a court decision.

So it's like anything else with the environment, it's generally where you're forced to stop that it stops.

It hasn't stopped on non-state land and even on state land there are some people encroaching and cutting peat when they really shouldn't be doing it.

What difference would a national park make?

A national park in this area would make huge sense.

This is 550 hectares of joined up land.

The marsh tillery can expand and contract within the landscape.