Bord na Móna CEO Tom Donnellan has announced more than 1,400 climate solutions focused jobs in total, the semi-state firm has revealed.
Following on from 550 jobs created over the last year and a half, a further 885 jobs are planned for, according to reports.
The move was announced today (Thursday, July 15) at an event in Ballycon Bog in Co. Offaly involving Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan and Bord na Móna top brass.
Taking to social media, Minister Ryan said: “What it is is a story about Bord na Móna turning from brown to green. It’s part of a major project we put €108 million into rehabilitating bogs.
“This bog would have been for 40 years a place where we extracted peat for use both in peat briquettes and for power generation. Now we’re stopping that, and those same drains that we used to be able to get the peat out are now being blocked, to let the water back in.”
Highlighting the flora and fauna regenerating on the bog, the minister highlighted:
“More than anything else [it] starts to be a store of carbon rather than a source of carbon.
“This is our Amazon; this is where we need to protect the earth and actually hold the carbon in the ground rather than burning it and putting it up into the air.
“The great thing about it is the very same skills Bord na Móna have learned over the decades in how to extract from a bog and drain a bog are the same skills we need now to put the carbon, hold the carbon in the bog – so there’s going to be a lot of jobs in this.”
The minister added that new jobs will also be created in wind energy and new renewable power supply systems being developed by Bord na Móna, as well as “new ways of growing food”.
“Hydroponic systems can be put in place here where we use this water resource and energy resource to grow plants in a new way.
“New enterprises, new community centres, new hubs that we can put in place that create community strength that bring jobs back to the midlands and right across the country,” Minister Ryan said.