Ceisteanna ó na Comhaltaí Eile - Other Members’ Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-15
============================================================

Carol Nolan (IND), Offaly

Go raibh maith agat, a Thaoisigh. I thank the Taoiseach for his response but I feel that a more practical common-sense approach is now needed. The real impact of this ban on the commercial sales of turf is people being cold in their homes. Older people have the ranges and they depend on fossil fuels like turf. When we look at the emissions, we are talking about imports coming in from Baltic states here, which is causing environmental issues. We are talking about a small number of people who want to extract peat and we are talking about our horticultural sector. In Offaly, we have lost too much already. We bore the brunt of the unjust transition, as I would call it. We really bore the brunt of that. We cannot afford to lose one more job, be it in the horticultural sector or any other sector. I ask the Taoiseach to please adopt a common-sense, practical and logical approach because the real impact is not addressing this issue. I feel that we have to allow peat extraction. We have to allow it and we also have to be fair with people in terms of this issue.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-15