Turf cutters – why are you taking the fall for Government inaction and incompetence? Do you really want to go to jail because successive elected officials and civil servants have undermined your way of life?
Do you really think you should go to jail while Bord na Mona and Bulrush and Westlands – the last two from across the border – are cutting away vast sections of raised bog with no planning permission and against EU law for Environmental Impact Assessment?
Do you remember December 1999 and an advertisement that appeared in your local paper telling you to stop cutting in March? You thought the Government backed down. Do you remember the Labour Party Conference in 2011? You thought the Government backed down. Do you remember the visits by Minister to turf cutting rallies this year? You thought the Government backed down. Did you meet Conor Skehan this year and were you told you would be able to cut away and your children would be able to cut away?
False hope was what you have been given – and up the garden path you have been led.
If the powers-that-be had from the outset talked to you and to the scientists and produced MANAGEMENT PLANS you would not be facing jail next year. Why are turf cutters in Northern Ireland and charcoal makers in Spain allowed to continue in SACs? (Not that we support this – but it could have happened. And the deal might have included restoration, which isn’t happening now.)
But because the Department of the Environment couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery, its too late now. Because of their utter contempt for European law they didn’t think they had to bother with the Habitats Directive. You got the politicians you deserved and now you must pay for it. Your own leader is setting this up as a cynical play to keep himself in the Dail as long as he has breath left in his body.
The European Commission, the European Parliament, and the European Commissioner have to defend the European Treaty. They have to enforce the Habitats Directive. The EU Commissioner for the environment believes that it is his job to defend the European Treaty and he is an honourable man who will do his job.
They will enforce stringent measures it in Malta where citizens believe it is their right to shoot birds. They will enforce draconian penalties it in Sweden where citizens want to shoot the wolves. And they will enforce these laws in Ireland where you want to cut turf – or every citizen will have to contribute to a fine of millions of euro at a time when none of us have any money.
You can not win because your Government didn’t fight your fight when it had the chance. What good did Shell To Sea supporters going to jail do?
If the Government really cared about the environment of your bogs they would have been in there closing off the drains, because it is the drainage that causes the damage and the drainage is still ongoing. They don’t give a damn for the environment. They just wanted to get re-elected, and they sold you a bag of soot.
Why should you punish yourself by going to jail when it is the Ministers of the time and the civil servants – many of them still there – who should be suffering for the lose of your traditional rights? Don’t do it. Help us get the big boys. Help us end all turf cutting in Ireland – with proper compensation where it is deserved – and make those who are really to blame take the penalties – not you.
Friends of the Irish Turf Cutters
The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect those of Village Magazine.
I am so fed up, as a turf cutter as being portraying as a whining, bemoaning bog-trotter. What the general public do not seem to realise is that it is more than turf cutters that are going to be affected by these changes to the bogs. There are three main drains that currently flow into the Liffey in the Kildare area. When the flood waters at Pollapuca dam are released the water from the river flows back up the drains and spreads over the bogs. If these are blocked the Liffey will have no run off area when the flood waters are released meaning any houses in the vicinity will be subject to flooding. This in turn will cause septic tanks to overflow- spreading effluent into the land and polluting the water table. Should this not be a concern for all of us? Who will accept the environmental and financial cost of such a disaster? As it is many of us cannot get flood insurance because of the recent upsurge in flooding around the country. These new changes now also mean that neither the general public nor the landowners themselves will have access to the bogs ie. people will not be able to walk , shoot or even bird watch on the bogs without the express written consent of the national parks and wildlife. I am not willing to accept this, my family has worked and taken care of this land for the last five generations and I am willing to stand up and fight for what I believe to be right. I want to be able to walk my dog down the road as I have always done and I want my children to continue climbing the trees in the forest they are about to pull down because it interferes with the bog. We do not cut turf to sell, nor do we make peat moss, briquettes, firelighters, firelogs, or even use it to make electricity, (8% approx of Ireland’s electricity comes from the burning of turf) we cut turf to keep warm and what we cut is at a sustainable level. These companies need to realise the time has come for them to cease decimating the land and let us get on with our lives.
Dear Tony,
I would like to reiterate the views expressed by Leona. I am also a Kildare turf cutter and NO this is not some sort of a campaign to blitz your Blog, we just happen to come from families that have been reared on the bogs for 5+ generations & have a very deep attachment to our bog environment.
You are right with your observations regarding that we have been lead a sorry dance as a result of the total ineptitude & incompetence of our successive governments. But are you saying it’s our own fault for not voting for the Green Party!!! How do you know we didn’t? I sure as hell didn’t vote for any of the usual FF or FG or Labour plebs as I haven’t an ounce of faith or trust in any of them. You seem to be pushing a line that the law is there now and it can’t be fought. Why don’t you publicly highlight the crucial points that ordinary turf cutters (Irish Citizens) demands could have been accommodated or why have you waited so long to suddenly show sympathy & support for us?
I openly invite you to contact me as I would really think you would enjoy meeting our community. I know you are aware of us as you documented “parts” of our bog very well last June 2011 with your submission to the EU Commissioner. You also stated that you had never seen any documented evidence of “hand-cut turf” on Mouds bog, which somewhat amuses me as part of the documented evidence you did submit, contained at least 5 photos of a turf bank owned by a local family who have ONLY ever cut with the Sléan. perhaps it slipped your mind… but then again, the Harrigans featured on the cover of the Agenda magazine with the Sunday Business Post 2 weeks ago, it could have refreshed your memory…
I can only again express our deep frustrations at every bloody governmental body (including yourselves) for how you have constantly portrayed us as a bunch of uneducated heathens with no respect for our environment. You mentioned Bulrush in your Blog, which hits a nerve with us here especially on Mouds Bog. They decimated their 300 acres of bog & approx 8 years ago sold out to NPWS. Since then the “wasteland” has remained exactly as it was left, – a 2 and half mile drain that was cut into the middle of the raised bog still remains wide open. Where are the regeneration plans in evidence here on a NPWS managed area?? In fact, where was your documented evidence on this in your submission? I would suggest that the next time you come onto our bogs, give us a call and we’ll give you a guided tour of Mouds Bog, since you glaringly missed the opportunity to photograph the 300 acres of desert under the management of NPWS. How are we supposed to have any faith or trust in anyone of ye??
We had an opportunity to meet with 1 of their top scientists at the Ploughing Championship and we discussed solutions that we had in mind. We as local domestic turf cutters actually offered to regenerate the Bulrush “bog” since they had shown no interest in “managing” the bog in the 8 years of possession. We said we would supply the machinery & man power if NPWS would supply their “scientific knowledge base” & financial backing. Needless to say we are still waiting. 300 acres of bog and in 30 years we would regenerate the bog which would also allow us to harvest domestic turf for 500 years for our community. Relocation is not an alternative for us here on Mouds Bog, the compensation is a joke – most of our turf banks are cut for multiple families, so €1,000 per 3 households wouldn’t give you Oil for a week or supply you with matches for a year.
I cant believe that designation lines that were drawn cannot be moved or a satisfactory solution cannot be drawn up to allow us to continue with a piece of our heritage and to continue co-existing with our environment. Stop the big boys – Bord Na Mona, they have raped our bogs and any drive through the Midlands plays testament to this. Only for the people of our bog years ago, Bord Na Mona would also have butchered Mouds Bog. But stupidly we thought by caring for our bogs and only taking what was required for our families to provide heat & cooking facilities (self-efficiency) has proven to be the last joke on us – “being nice certainly does not pay” – we are now the ones perceived by city-dwellers as the butchers of the environment and Bord Na Mona are just “diversifying” into water management and waste management and paid millions to give their public face a massive facelift ” as being green”. What a joke!!
We are also just ordinary people with ordinary lives. We do not have the financial backing or the ears of the powers that be in Europe which you seem to hold firmly in your grasp. How do we as an organisation truly get our voices heard, all the EU has ever heard is your voice. How do you fund all of this? What does the EU really know about us? Do they know that we maintain our bogs, clear roads of rubbish, that we build nest boxes, put out grain & feed for the wildlife, remove vermin, maintain the fire break areas, this year we have cut & foot & will deliver turf to our OAP’s. We are a tight knit community that look out for our neighbours.
If as you said “we turf cutters could have been accommodated as our fellow turf cutters were in Northern Ireland” then I see absolutely no reason why we can’t be accommodated now! Laws can be amended, God knows we’ve seen enough of that occur in this country when it suits our so called leaders. We are not throwing the towel in, everyman, woman & child on Mouds Bog in Kildare will continue to fight to have their voices heard without bias. We will fight to save our constitutional right to own our own property and the right to provide warmth & shelter for our family.
sincerely yours,
Fiona Conlan
Any particular reason why my reply/response to Tony’s Blog is under the heading of:
” Tony Lowes says:
December 2, 2011 at 12:13 pm”
If this is a show of public support for domestic turf cutters – thanks Tony!
Fiona Conlan
Kildare Domestic Turf Cutter
Yes – apologies, Fiona, but it’s because you sent your comment in more than once and the blog read the second one as coming from Tony not you.
Dear Fiona,
I think Tony will be replying separately. I am replying because I was part of the Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) site visits in May. You make some interesting points, but some are not accurate or fair. Our intention has never been to portray turf cutters as ‘uneducated heathens with no respect for [the] environment’ – we wouldn’t endorse this view, and we don’t believe it ourselves.
You say:
“You mentioned Bulrush in your Blog, which hits a nerve with us here especially on Mouds Bog. They decimated their 300 acres of bog & approx 8 years ago sold out to NPWS. Since then the “wasteland” has remained exactly as it was left, – a 2 and half mile drain that was cut into the middle of the raised bog still remains wide open. Where are the regeneration plans in evidence here on a NPWS managed area?? In fact, where was your documented evidence on this in your submission? I would suggest that the next time you come onto our bogs, give us a call and we’ll give you a guided tour of Mouds Bog, since you glaringly missed the opportunity to photograph the 300 acres of desert under the management of NPWS. How are we supposed to have any faith or trust in anyone of ye??”
It is incorrect to say that we didn’t photograph the commercially exploited area on Mouds Bog. There are 10 photos of the commercially exploited area towards the end of the online album for Mouds Bog: https://picasaweb.google.com/114566506932046014907/002331MoudsBogKildare?authkey=Gv1sRgCIKeiq-pqdrAcQ#. We visited Mouds Bog twice during our site visits – once on May 13, when we visited only the turf cutting areas; we then returned on 20 May, when we visited some other turf cutting areas and the commercially exploited area. Perhaps you visited the online album after the photos of the 13 May visit went up but before the photos of the 20 May went up. As you will see, our photos of the commercially exploited area reflect the points you mention, as do the captions to the photos – the open drains, the lack of recovery, etc. We were at pains in uploading the photos to record in captions that the photos were of a commercially exploited area and were not of a turf cutting area, so as not to be accused of blaming the damage on turf cutters. We did not include photos of the commercially exploited area in the main body of our report because the report was about (ongoing) turf cutting in Natura 2000 sites, not about historic extraction carried out by commercial operators, which has ceased (albeit that drains remain open). And we included only a small selection of photos in the main body of the report in any event. The final version of our report contained the link to the album showing ALL of the photos taken on Mouds Bog, including the commercial area.
The Bulrush area is indeed a disgrace, and it is totally unacceptable that the NPWS has done nothing to restore the area. (It is worth noting, though, that the reason Bulrush stopped extracting peat from the bog was, as you say, because the NPWS bought them out, so the NPWS surely has to be thanked for that? As a matter of interest, how did Bulrush come to be extracting peat from the bog in the first place? Who sold them the land/right to extract peat? I ask simply because I do not know.) As the following aerial shot of Mouds Bog clearly shows, while the commercial operation has decimated the bog, turf cutting has done enormous damage too. We do not see how that can seriously be denied, and it is supported by any number of scientific reports: https://picasaweb.google.com/114566506932046014907/OverviewOfSiteBoundariesAndPhotoLocations?authkey=Gv1sRgCNq19IGEjdbQ8AE#5610609853101557458. We would strongly support your idea of local people supplying the machinery and man power to carry out restoration work on the SAC bogs, funded by the NPWS, and we would be more than happy to help in campaigning for this to happen. The NPWS did the scientific work way back in 1996(!) (http://www.npws.ie/publications/archive/McDonagh_1996_Drain_Blocking_Raised_Bogs.pdf), yet they still haven’t got around to funding the practical restoration work – the problem seems to be a lack of funds (or at least an unwillingness to prioritise funding for this work), coupled with a lack of political will.
Regarding hand cutting, we are of course willing to stand corrected that a family continues to cut turf by hand on Mouds Bog. (And yes, we saw the Sunday Business Post article, which showed hand cutting but not a machine in sight – not an accurate representation of the true ratio of machines to hand cutters on the ground in Ireland.) We did not see a single hand cutter working on the bogs during our visits to 33 raised bog SACs in May. We saw lots of heavy machinery. We don’t deny that there may be some small number of people still cutting turf by hand, but as a report for the NPWS concluded in 2006, hand cutting “is not likely to be a significant activity on any designated raised bogs now or in the future”. Ming Flanagan admitted as much on the Pat Kenny radio show a couple of months ago. And it is worth noting the following comment from a turf cutter in the recent documentary ‘Home Turf’: “The machines are ruining the bog. They’re cutting big holes in it…. If ‘twas done the old way the bogs would not be as damaged” (http://www.examiner.ie/features/from-the-bog-to-the-silver-screen-173361.html#ixzz1ferWpwcL).
You say “300 acres of bog and in 30 years we would regenerate the bog which would also allow us to harvest domestic turf for 500 years for our community”. Active bog grows at the rate of about 1mm per year (http://www.raisedbogrestoration.ie/life04/downloads/raised-bog-restoration-brochure.pdf). So even if the commercially exploited area could be restored to an active state immediately (which is impossible), in 30 years all you would have would be 30mm. The damage done to the commercially exploited area on Mouds Bog is unbelievable, and it is very sad to see that it remains a wasteland. Unfortunately, however, it is not possible to point to the damage done by commercial operators and to contrast turf cutting as an example of “co-existing with our environment”, as you say. Any number of independent scientific reports make it very clear that turf cutting does not amount to sustainable coexistence. The most recent is the 2011 Bogland report, produced by UCD for the EPA: http://www.epa.ie/downloads/pubs/research/land/strive75-bogland-for-web.pdf. Here is a sample quote: “It is important to point out that turbary rights are incompatible with the management, restoration and future conservation of any important sites worthy of conservation as they directly and indirectly affect negatively the whole ecosystem (not only where the peat is cut). More importantly, smallscale peat cutting has led to a severe diminution of Ireland’s peatland carbon store (Wilson, 2008).” The Bogland report records that 1 million tonnes of turf are believed to be cut each year for domestic fuel; the three peat-fired power stations (supplied by Bord na Mona) together burn about 3 million tonnes per year. So domestic turf cutting is not as small-scale, and is certainly not as low impact, as it might sometimes appear.
We (FIE) are not a governmental body, nor are we predominantly city dwellers (though we do not see that this would necessarily make a difference in any event). In fact, we are staffed almost entirely by unpaid volunteers – people who believe strongly in protecting Ireland’s natural heritage for all of our benefit, include for future generations of Irish people. We do not have the ears of Europe, but we believe that without EU environmental law Ireland would be in a much worse state environmentally than is already the case, and we believe that EU law (negotiated line by line by Irish governments, not imposed from outside) should be complied with. We have already spent a huge amount of time going after the Bord na Mona, et al – largely unsuccessfully so far, but recent changes in the law could change matters – and we will continue to do so. Indeed, the Natura 2000 sites are one part of a much bigger problem, which is the almost totally unregulated extraction of peat outside protected areas. If you would be willing to help us with this campaign against the big commercial operators, we would very much appreciate your support. The media likes to pick up on the turf cutting side of the story, and often neglects to mention the other major issues we raise, such as commercial extraction outside protected areas. See our recent slides from the European Parliament, for example: http://www.friendsoftheirishenvironment.net/peat/links/peat_presentation_eu_petition.pdf. The media reported only the turf cutting side of the story.
As a final point: you ask how you can truly get your voices heard. The answer, I think, would be to challenge the sorts of points raised above with alternative arguments and facts, supported by evidence. You can then communicate these points to the European Commission and to supportive MEPs (like Marian Harkin, for example). It is worth noting, though, that TDs supportive of your cause have already had direct access this year to the EU Environment Commissioner, which is more than we have had (see: http://www.martinheydon.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=230:heydon-meets-eu-commissioner-re-kildare-bogs&catid=60:press-releases&Itemid=203). The report of that meeting concludes that “this would be the first of a number of meetings between the Commission, public representatives and turfcutters in the coming months.” Note also that Ming is planning to seek another meeting with the EU Environment Commissioner soon (see: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/kfqlcwqlidcw/rss2/). Is your complaint that Ming, the TCCA and the TDs mentioned in the links above do not represent all turf cutters, and that you would like to have your voices heard separately to the TCCA, etc? We are all for full participation on this issue – it is much better if all interested parties have their voices heard. As I feel sure you will appreciate, however, we would regard the fact that it has taken 19 years for anything effective to be done about peat extraction in Natura 2000 sites (Habitats Directive adopted in 1992, first legal step taken by the European Commission in January 2011) – plus the government’s unlawful 10 year ‘derogations’ for turf cutting – as evidence that it is environmentalists who have been sidelined in this debate for the past two decades. If you believe that turf cutting amounts to sustainable coexistence, we would suggest challenging the research that indicates otherwise. Simply stating that turf cutting is sustainable can never be enough. The research we have discovered suggests that turf cutting:
(a) has huge climate change impacts (which will have major negative implications for, amongst others, future generations of Irish people and the most vulnerable people in the developing world). The impacts arise both through the burning of peat and via the drying and oxidation of the bogs, which turns them from large carbon sinks into persistent carbon sources;
(b) leads to biodiversity loss (notwithstanding work like putting up bird boxes and clearing rubbish, which should of course be supported), including some of the most endangered habitats in Europe and the world (active raised bog and active blanket bog);
(c) creates human health problems, since turf cutting and peat extraction lead to increased run-off of dissolved organic carbon from bogs. When peaty water is chlorinated as part of the drinking water treatment process, this creates trihalomethanes (THMs), which are potentially carcinogenic in humans. Ireland has problems with THM exceedances in drinking water. So peat extraction in Ireland could lead to higher incidences of cancer in areas supplied with drinking water from peat catchments; and
(d) disrupts the hydrology of bogs, meaning that they can no longer play their natural role in flood prevention.
It is worth noting, finally, that there are hidden costs, too, of peat extraction (commercial and turf cutting). Ireland has to buy offset credits if it fails to meet its emissions targets under the Kyoto protocol. The tab for this is picked up by Irish taxpayers. As you will see from the following, a recent estimate puts the cost of buying these credits at around EUR 86m: http://www.foe.ie/news/2011/11/09/epa-figures-reveal-90-million-windfall-profit-for-irelands-biggest-polluters/. So while turf might seem relatively cheap as a fuel, it imposes and will continue to impose financial costs on the wider public, as well as environmental costs.
Regards,
Andrew Jackson