Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage Malcolm Noonan has confirmed that the government will be opposing the bill that would allow temporary peat extraction for horticultural purposes.

The Horticultural Peat (Temporary Measures) Bill 2021 was introduced last week by Fine Gael senator Regina Doherty and Fianna Fáil senator Robbie Gallagher.

The bill is aimed at ending Irish horticultural growers’ reliance on expensive imported peat as a growing medium for their produce by allowing them to extract Irish peat as part of a just transition.

Minister Noonan told the Seanad yesterday (Tuesday, December 1) that he believes a solution can be found to the issue, but that the government will be opposing this bill.

The minister said: “My department has received initial legal advice on the bill from the Office of the Attorney General, which has indicated that there are serious legal issues with the bill in terms of EU environmental law.

“We must take those concerns very seriously but we also have to work together to find solutions for the domestic horticultural industry. That is what the government is working to achieve.

“While I believe that this bill is well-intentioned, as others have identified, any proposals that we bring forward to address these concerns must be in compliance with Ireland’s obligations under the environmental impact assessment and habitats directives.

“Otherwise, we will find ourselves in breach of European law, and potentially back in a situation where the legislation would not withstand a challenge in the courts. That is not where any of us wish to be.”

The minister said he understands that a report examining the potential alternatives to the use of peat in horticulture will be brought in a memorandum to the government next week.

This will be accompanied by a “series of additional proposals developed in a significant piece of cross-departmental work undertaken by the Departments of the Environment, Climate and Communications, Agriculture, Food and the Marine and my own department”.

‘It is not about exporting peat’

Speaking in the Seanad yesterday, senator Regina Doherty said that since the bill was introduced last week, “the people who are against it have sought to make it something completely other than what it is”.

“It is not about exporting peat, nor is it about using peat for anything other than horticultural practices,” the senator said.

“This is not about exports for reasons other than horticulture. There is no escaping the fact that we started importing for horticulture in September of this year.

“Unless we do something to produce Irish peat for Irish producers, we will have to continue importing peat from Sri Lanka, Latvia and wherever else we can get our hands on it.

“Having large shipments with hundreds of trucks bringing these products to different places in the country is not sustainable.

“Despite the argument that seems to have been created over the past week, this is not about fuel or exporting. It is about taking a very small amount of the peat that could be produced in this country to provide for an Irish market that produces food for Irish consumers.”

Peat bill accused of giving ‘false hope to growers’

The senator said that the bill has been “described by colleagues as giving false hope to growers”, and that it was “disingenuous”.

“Using horticultural growers as collateral damage while taking an opportunity to have a go at big industry is disingenuous. That will offer little or no hope. The horticultural industry does not have time for political games; it needs solutions,” senator Doherty continued.

“It needed them months ago. We are introducing this bill in an attempt to give the government, which has now been in situ for almost 18 months, an opportunity to do what should have been done two or three years ago by the previous government.

“This government has an opportunity to do what is right for the horticultural industry and to recognise that it needs a medium in which to grow its products.”