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Chapter 1: Why is the European Commission suing Ireland over peat extraction?
News this week now. We are off to court. The European Commission is not happy about what we haven't done to protect our bogs. They say we have failed to stop large-scale commercial peat extraction, so Ireland is getting sued again.
Now, one version of the story goes that unlicensed and unregulated operators are digging up sensitive habitats and exporting hundreds of thousands of tonnes of peat for the hobby gardeners of Britain.
Chapter 2: What are the consequences of unregulated peat extraction on sensitive habitats?
Another version of the story is that the Irish horticulture industry, already operating on the tightest of margins, would be completely banjacked if it had to try and grow everything from mushrooms to strawberries in alternatives to peat. Those alternatives are expensive and not entirely proven, so there's no choice but to continue extracting.
As is always the case, though, when you spend a little bit of time talking to everyone, the truth is a tangled mix of those two stories. We have done a bad job protecting our raised bog networks, but also take Pete away in the morning and you would end a large part of Irish horticulture.
My name is Billy Kelly.
Chapter 3: How does peat extraction impact the Irish horticulture industry?
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
Billy doesn't like that his industry has to continue to use peat as a growing medium. He's spent years experimenting with alternatives because he agrees that the details of Ireland's ongoing failure to properly protect vulnerable peatland habitats is pretty grim.
Failing to take appropriate steps to avoid the deterioration of protected raised bogs and degraded raised bog habitat as a result of activities related to still ongoing peat cutting as last... The evidence amassed by the Commission appears to be quite extensive. Within the sites Clun Moylan Bog, Loch Lorgin Bog, Glenomady Turlock, Loch Ree, Bellarmigallar Bog, Callow Bog, Clun Chambers Bog,
And then, on the other hand, experience has taught all the Irish growers of trees, of fruit, of vegetables, of plants, that if they can't produce what the consumer expects and what retailers demand, then they will be replaced on the shelves by something grown in a country that can.
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.
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Chapter 4: What alternatives to peat are being explored by the horticulture industry?
The horticultural industry is using less than half of 1% of what had been harvested 10 years ago.
There's two big screws, opposing screws, and that's how it gets shredded.
Classman Compost on the Westmeath-Longford border is one of the companies stuck between this rock and a boggy place. They've agreed with the EPA not to take any more peat off their 250 hectare site right now and they have a complicated mix of substitutes being added to their composts instead.
The wood chip here is for making wood fibre. So we get it, we've a couple of different suppliers for wood chip. We get it from Balcast and then a skillet.
Kevin Mahon shows me around the enormous stockpiles in their yard, some of them towering 15 metres over our heads. Wood fibre from shredded Sitka spruce, bark from lodgepole pine and the nearest direct replacement for peat, shredded coconut husks or coir husks.
The coir comes in in five kilo blocks. Where were these coconuts grown originally? These are mainly from India, a little bit from Sri Lanka, but mainly we get it from around the Kerala region. Okay, in southern India.
Yeah. And what job does it do?
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Chapter 5: Why is peat still considered essential for Irish growers?
Oh, it's a peat replacement, yeah.
So that's peat for peat?
Yeah.
Is it as good?
It has its challenges. It doesn't hold water as well. It doesn't buffer nutrients as well compared to peat. So you have to compensate by increasing your fertiliser to offset that.
If there was no peat as a part of this process at all, what's the consequence into the industries that you're supplying? Can you give them an alternative that is completely peat-free?
No, we can produce an alternative. The problem is if all our customers were to go to peat-free, then we wouldn't have enough raw materials. There's not enough bark, there's not enough coir available. We wouldn't have enough wood chip. We just couldn't replace.
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Chapter 6: What are the challenges of transitioning to peat-free growing mediums?
Today, we would not have the capacity to replace all the peat that we currently use. But we can produce peat-free, but if everyone wants it tomorrow, there just isn't the availability of the materials there.
So there is still peat being harvested for Classman compost, just not by them.
Yes, I think it's going to be a very interesting court case if it proceeds because it appears the information that it's based on is...
John Neenan heads up the group that represents many of the commercial peat extractors. He doesn't believe that either the EPA or the European Commission have their facts right in taking this case.
For example, they're talking about horticultural peat, large-scale extraction. There's probably less than 600 hectares being harvested in Ireland at the moment by horticultural peat.
Can there really only be 600 hectares? The EPA says that it's identified 44 sites that are of interest to it.
Yes, I think the court case will be based on the EPA report in June 2025. And I investigated those sites and four sites they're referred to. One was in Abilara, which was a Borna Mona site, and they had stopped harvesting since 2021. The second site was around here where we are in Clasman and Borna Mona. And as you see, Clasman and Borna Mona have stopped harvesting since 2021.
So the long and the short of it is you're saying that the EPA and the European Commission are mistaken in the assumptions that they're making about what activity is taking place on these lands? Absolutely. The EPA has just recently published on their website pictures of excavation taking place on a large site in February of this year and it certainly looks to be well over 10 hectares.
Can they really be getting all of this wrong, John?
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Chapter 7: How is the court case related to peat extraction expected to unfold?
But when I came to this company here in 1986, we were grant aided by the IDA at that stage. One of the conditions of that grant aid was that we could not sell in Ireland or we could not sell in the UK. We had to sell in Europe. So it's only in the very last short number of years that this issue has arisen.
Changing rules and regulations doesn't really influence physics and what's happening on these bogs and the emissions that are coming off them or the water that isn't being absorbed that is creating flooding in some parts of the country. That's the reason that we have to rehabilitate these bogs.
Yes, but the European Union are not saying anything about rehabilitation. What they're saying at this moment is that areas are being harvested without proper licences. You're not objecting to peat harvesting per se. They're harvesting in Germany... in Lithuania, Latvia, Sweden, Finland, Estonia. So there's not an issue about harvesting peat with the EU.
Irish peat is being harvested without planning permission, without environmental regulation, whereas German, Latvian, Lithuanian peat isn't.
The issue now is that there is nobody that will come on and say, yes, it's okay, you have done your screenings and you do not require planning.
There could be fines as a consequence of this court case. And if we were to take the Derry Bryan wind farm as a possible benchmark, that worked out at 20 million euro for one site. There would be multiple sites involved. This is a polluting and a damaging industry. Yes, it's also a vital industry for the horticulture sector, but it's doing a lot of damage to habitats as well.
No, the misconception again is that we are saying we are opening new areas of bog. The areas of bog are already opened. The emissions from those 600 hectares of horticultural peat in Ireland... is less than the emissions from one day's flights from Dublin to London Airport. So it is insignificant. The area of land, 600 hectares in relation to the 1.4 million hectares of peatlands in Ireland,
I've no doubt that that figure is true for what you're currently harvesting, but it's what you've historically harvested and nobody has any idea how rehabilitated those bogs are or how much emissions are coming off them.
What I'm wondering is what kind of assurances the industry can offer on rehabilitating the historically degraded bogs now, or is that just going to have to be the taxpayer's problem?
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Chapter 8: What future does the Irish peat industry face amidst environmental regulations?
The Irish peat industry in Ireland has reduced its levels by over 90% between 2019 and 2025. There's not one other industry in Ireland that have made such reductions. The electricity are somewhere like 33%. So we are way ahead of any other industry in this country. It was part of the government's policy to develop peat fields. So they set up Bornemona to develop the peat fields.
This company was funded by the state to set up operations.
So are you saying that it is therefore the state's responsibility to clean up the mess?
I'm saying just because perception changes and reality changes, then a company like this that was grant-aided and held by the state and by the state bank, ICC, to develop the PEAT, to export it to different countries to bring employment to this area, then they should not be held responsible now to go back to that time for doing that. That's a lot of risk to expose the taxpayer to, isn't it?
It is, but we would say that our industry, we have tried to get this regulated. In 2021, we implied McCann Fitzgerald solicitors to draw up legislation that could sort out the issue. We got it into the Shannon, sponsored by Senator Regina Doherty at that time and Robbie Gallagher. It got a forced reading and then the Tánaiste and Taoiseach asked him to withdraw that.
So we have spent a lot of time, a lot of effort and it's very simple.
So are you saying that any risk of exposure to fines is now the responsibility of the Irish government rather than of your industry? It certainly is. All things told, how much peat do you think, how much land is going to be required to meet Ireland's needs and those of our neighbouring countries that we supply?
I think for the Irish needs, the 600 hectares that are being operated on at the moment is more than sufficient.
Is what you're saying about peat alternatives that you think you only need 10 more years and then there will be no harvesting on bogs anywhere?
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