Turf Cutting
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-13
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PJ Murphy (FG), Agricultural Panel

Yes indeed, my own office has over the past number of months been in touch with both the Minister and the NPWS on the matter on behalf of the 80 families in question in south-east Galway. To a point, I agree with what the Minister of State is saying. This scheme has been very successful for the protection of the peatlands. It just has not been successful for the people on the ground who co-operated with the scheme in good faith. These families co-operated with the scheme in good faith on the clear understanding that a genuine effort would be made to find alternative turf banks for them. The general opinion right across south-east Galway is that the effort made to find relocation turf banks was a very poor box-ticking exercise.
As is the case with so many of our lost rural traditions, 30 years from now young people will ask, "What happened to the tradition of turf cutting? Why did Irish people abandon the age-old tradition of turf cutting in this country?" While our wetland habitats might be threatened, they are not threatened to anywhere near the same extent as an awful lot of our very endangered rural traditions, and I include turf cutting in that. I fear that we will answer future generations by telling them that this Government was involved in the systematic extermination of an age-old tradition, turf cutting, right across rural Ireland. Very often I wonder if it is to appease people who maybe have very little understanding about the difference between the damage being done by cutting turf for a supply in a domestic home on a singular basis as was traditionally done and the industrial-scale peat extraction that was done by the State through Bord na Móna. They have two very different consequences for our wetlands.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:56+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-13