EU PETITIONS COMMITTEE HEARING

TURF CUTTING IN IRELAND

Date: Wednesday 19 September 18, 2012

Time: 15.15 Irish Time / 16.15 Brussels's Time /

Friends of the Irish Environment today returned to Brussels to make a second presentation to the European Parliament's Petition's Committee.  The Commission's Services will be in attendance and will respond. Ireland will also have representatives present.

Filed in 2010, FIE's Petition sought to ensure that cutting would end on Ireland's protected bogs and that licensing and planning laws would apply to the unauthorised industrial producers on the raised midland's bogs.

FIE is concerned over Commission inaction in the face of their 2012 aerial survey, which showed continued cutting at many of the protected bogs. These photographs were displayed to the Committee.

FIE is also seeking the Committee's help in requiring the Commission to address unregulated peat extraction outside protected areas on the Irish midlands bogs. While the Commission began infringement proceedings in January 2011 aimed at securing compliance with EU Directives in respect of protected bogs, it did not launch parallel proceedings in respect of infringements of EU Directives outside these Natura 2000 sites.

This failure was the subject of an EU Court of Justice decision against Ireland in 1999. FIE displayed photographs of one site, cited in the 1999 judgment of the EU Court of Justice against Ireland for non compliance with EIA law, which is still operating with no license and no EIA.

The group is also seeking a response from the Commission to Deputy Eamon O'Cuiv's allegations in the Dail in March of this year that the Commission agreed in 1999 to turn a blind eye to Ireland's protected bogs in return for a guarantee 'to remove the commercial turf cutters who accounted for a figure of 96% of the effort.'  (Dail motion debate, 6 March 2012.

'No such action has been taken against these commercial cutters, in spite of our applications to An Bord Pleanala and the Environmental Protection Agency. We have been seeking a ruling from An Bord Pleanala for three years on a reference to determine if planning permission is required for these activities. The Board dismissed our reference in 2010 but the High Court disallowed their refusal and required them to address the issue. They still have not done so 'because of the complexity of the issues'.

A spokesman for the organisation said that 'the continuing industrial extraction of turf by private companies without any assessment or regulation continues today, mocking O'Cuiv's promises and the Commision's 'deals'.

The group is opposed to all form of turf cutting, citing statistics that detail the release of greenhouse gases, the impact on water quality, habitats, protected species, and flood control.   

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