Independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice is calling for the country’s electricity plants to continue firing on peat, as he contends that “no meaningful employment alternatives” are in place for those affected by “the premature closing” of the midlands’ peat industry.
Speaking at yesterday’s trade-union backed Bord na Móna (BNM) workers protest outside ESB’s peat-fired West Offaly Power Plant in Shannonbridge, Co. Offaly, the deputy compared the Irish Government’s so-called “Just Transition” away from fossil fuel-derived power, to that of Germany’s plan to phase out coal-fired power stations over the next two decades.
Last November, it was announced that ESB’s Lough Ree (located in Lanesboro, Co. Longford) and West Offaly power stations – both supplied with peat from Bord na Móna (BNM) – will shut down at the end of 2020 – 10 years earlier than originally planned – in a bid to decarbonise the country’s economy in line with EU targets.
More than 1,400 jobs – both direct and indirect – are believed to be at risk from the closures.
Plans to demolish both of the power stations – that have brought generational employment to the region since 1946 – by the end of the year have also been confirmed.
Addressing a 500-strong crowd at the rally – which also highlighted significant pension concerns among impacted workers – the Roscommon-Galway representative said: “A ‘Just Transition’ in Germany is 2038; a ‘Just Transition’ in Ireland – because we are going to save the rest of the world – is the end of 2020.
“There is a cohort of people in this country that think they can tell you, and everyone else, what to do – even though they don’t own a rood of land or a rood of bog.
“And it’s time that people in the rural parts of Ireland wake up and smell the roses.
“It’s the Climate Action Plan that has you all out here today losing your jobs – because we’re telling everyone that we’re going to be ‘carbon neutral’ by 2050.
“There’s young kids here today – do they deserve a future around Shannonbridge; or in Co. Galway; or in Co. Roscommon; or in the eight other affected counties in the midlands? It’s my belief that they do.
We should not be treated like second-class citizens. I’m a bog man; I’m proud of it; I work the bog.
Fitzmaurice also turned his attention to earlier remarks from the Green Party’s agriculture spokesperson, Pippa Hackett, who also addressed the crowds at the rally – as did Fianna Fáil’s Barry Cowen; independent TD Denis Naughten; Fine Gael’s Marcella Corcoran Kennedy; Fianna Fáil’s Eugene Murphy; plus SIPTU’s Willie Noone, amongst others.
“Pippa said earlier about ‘stopping burning’; but we need to keep burning it [peat] because the people in these areas don’t live in a region as affluent as Dublin and other places.
Last October, the Government outlined details of financial support to be provided to workers as the region moves away from fossil fuels and towards a low-carbon economy.
The Government committed to investing €31 million in a number of key initiatives, including: a €6 million “Just Transition Fund” for reskilling workers and community development; €5 million for bog restoration and rehabilitation on non-BNM bogs; and €20 million to deliver “a new model for group housing upgrades” in the midlands.
Fitzmaurice urged caution on this package, continuing: “They talk about jobs in insulating your houses – that’s absolute rubbish. It will be whoever is the cheapest contractor that is going to insulate the houses.
“They talk about rewetting, but [based on his own analysis] that €5 million will only cover 17 diggers over 240 days of work.
“Unless we make sure an economic area is created here for you, with money pumped into it, then it will be the same story that has happened in Galway in the coal yard; and in Sligo in the coal yard – where people were forced to take redundancy.
Looking ahead to the next Dáil – following the fast-approaching General Election on Saturday, February 8 – Fitzmaurice pointed to the next programme for government.
“A programme for government will be put together in the next three to four weeks and that’s the time for you, and the unions, and all of us politicians, to either stand up and be counted – or shut the gates on rural Ireland,” he concluded.