There will be no ban on the gifting or sharing of turf under planned restrictions on its sale proposed by Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications Eamon Ryan.
A spokesperson for the minister told Agriland that there would be no restrictions on sharing turf, saying: “People should be able to share with family members and elderly neighbours”.
The spokesperson also said that there will be an allowance in the new rules for people to continue to burn turf in “genuinely rural areas where there isn’t a risk of pollution”.
These controversial regulations are currently in a draft form and have not yet gone to the government as a whole. This draft is currently being reviewed by the European Commission.
However, Minister Ryan will meet with the other coalition leaders – Fianna Fáil leader and Taoiseach Micheál Martin, and Fine Gael leader and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar – as well as government backbench TDs (many of whom have directed heavy criticism at the proposed regulations) and non-government organisations (NGOs) to outline and discuss the draft.
The spokesperson said that the aim is “about getting the balance right between targeting fuel poverty and reliance on an inefficient form of energy, and the need to protect people’s health”.
The spokesperson also noted that the draft rules were prepared on foot of a public consultation in 2021, and that the last three environment ministers had “backed down” on bringing forward similar regulations after “legal threats or fear of a backlash”.
The “primary intention” of the draft regulations is to focus on “large scale and commercial sale of smoky fuels”, Minister Ryan’s representative said, arguing that there is evidence of an increase in sales of turf into larger towns and cities, resulting in “a poisonous build-up of unsafe smoke levels at certain times”.
It is argued that the primary focus of these regulations is not the phasing out of turf use altogether, but that this would be done “in parallel” with targeted retro-fitting and social welfare supports for people “most impacted by the regulations and those at greatest risk of fuel poverty”.
The spokesperson said that the measure will be targeted at those selling “harmful fuels”, primarily into urban areas, with enforcement based on air quality measurements.
In terms of retrofitting and supports, the Department of the Environment says that there will be a “targeted focus” on people using turf “as a cheap but inefficient form of fuel”.
This would include “people who are most at risk of fuel poverty, who we will focus our retrofit activity on and where we will focus our social welfare supports on immediately”.
“We want to work with community-based organisations to identify these people for retrofitting and home upgrades,” Minister Ryan’s spokesperson commented.
The spokesperson also said that “the legal case for banning smoky fuels from the market needs to be consistent across all fuels, such that they can withstand legal challenges from the coal industry”, noting that, in 2018, “a number” of companies from outside the state “threatened that they would sue if the government [of the day] banned smoky coal and not other fuels such as peat or wood”.