Every year an area of peat bog the size of the Curragh is shaved off, loaded on to lorries and quietly shipped to the United Kingdom and Europe. Thousands of acres of Irish soil are added to British territory on an annual basis with a minimum of fuss.
For decades, up to 27 million British gardeners have been gratefully buying our peat for virtually nothing when compared to its true value.
As well as firing our power stations, the bogs of the Irish midlands are the source of more than half of the peat used in gardening in the United Kingdom.
Irish moss peat can be purchased from the shelves of the big UK home retailers for a lower price than in many Irish garden centres. The great British gardening tradition is blooming. But at the expense of Ireland’s nature and our finances and at risk to our public health.
Most of the industrial peat extraction in Ireland is either poorly regulated or not regulated at all. While the lack of regulation keeps peat moss prices down and benefits British consumers , it comes at a high price for Ireland.
The drainage of bogs for peat extraction causes many problems. Peat solids in drainage water discharged to rivers make their way into water treatment plants where they can react with the chlorination process to create cancer-causing trihalomethanes in our drinking water.
Drinking water
Only recently the European Commission initiated infringement proceedings against Ireland for failing to meet its obligations under the drinking water directive in relation to concentrations of trihalomethanes in the drinking water of more than 500,000 people.
The drainage of bogs for peat extraction causes many problems. Peat solids in drainage water discharged to rivers make their way into water treatment plants
Ireland is facing other EU proceedings and fines of reportedly up to €600 million per year for failure to meet targets for climate changing emissions, a significant percentage of which come from the drainage of peatlands. Peat in its natural state can be a great store of carbon but, when drained, it acts in the opposite way and releases carbon. Even though the bulk of Irish horticultural peat is used in foreign flower beds, it is Ireland’s citizens who will pay the hefty fines for the emissions caused by its extraction.
The absence of proper regulation of peat extraction means that the effect on the environment and nature is not being assessed. Ireland’s biodiversity is under pressure from climate change and unsustainable land management practices. England’s roses may be blooming but in Ireland the wild bog orchids are becoming scarcer. Almost half of the endangered birds in Ireland have peatland habitats.
Manufacturing and bagging
The benefits to Ireland of this industry are difficult to pinpoint. There is seasonal employment for workers in the milling of peat. But much of the employment created in the sale of Ireland’s horticultural peat to the UK and Europe is in marketing, administration and retail roles outside of Ireland.
Almost half of the endangered birds in Ireland have peatland habitats
The manufacturing and bagging of products destined for the British market is also increasingly being done in the United Kingdom. Bord na Móna recently acquired two compost-manufacturing factories in Liverpool. Other companies extracting peat from the Irish midlands have chosen to locate their processing and sales operations in Northern Ireland.
In January of this year, the extraction of peat on bogs of 30 hectares or more in area was made exempt from planning permission by the Government. This does not affect the small bog plots of domestic turf-cutters, but bogs totalling tens of thousands of hectares reserved for the large-scale industrial extraction of peat.
The removal of the planning permission obligation is to be accompanied by a new licensing regime under the Environmental Protection Agency, but with a delayed starting time that could in practice be years away.
One consequence of this new regulatory move may be to keep cheap Irish peat moss in prime position on the shelves of UK garden retailers at a time when the UK government is introducing progressive environmental policies to promote peat-free compost alternatives. But it comes at a greater cost to Irish public health and our environment.
Caroline Lewis is a director of the charity Friends of the Irish Environment