The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine has written to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage Darragh O’Brien, requesting that he send officials to a sitting of the committee.
This is after the committee invited personnel from three government departments to attend next Tuesday’s (July 20) sitting on the issue of peat.
The three department’s that were asked to send officials are the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine; the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage; and the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications.
However, officials from Minister O’Brien’s department – which deals with peat harvesting under its ‘heritage’ remit – have indicated that they are unavailable to attend, Agriland understands.
The other two departments indicated that they would have somebody at the meeting. This prompted the committee to write to Minister O’Brien with a view to having his officials attend the meeting.
Within the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the issue of peat is most directly under the remit of the Minister of State with responsibility for heritage Malcolm Noonan.
The request from the committee comes on the back of a protest this week by the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) on the lack of peat for the horticulture sector.
At the protest, IFA South Leinster regional chairperson Francie Gorman told Agriland that the availability of peat for the sector was a “huge issue”.
Gorman said: “It’s up to Minister [of State] Pippa Hackett and Minister for Agriculture, Charlie McConalogue, to ensure that there is a proper supply of peat that we can harvest on Bord na Móna sites for the horticulture sector.
“[We] can’t be asked to compete with the garden centres and with people buying bags of peat individually for their gardens, in order to have a supply for our business,” he argued.
“Without a proper ready-made supply these boys will go out of business,” Gorman warned.