Longford turf cutters urged to support midlands demonstration

“What we would like to achieve is to be able to cut turf,” one of the demonstration organisers said of the action.

The main focus of the Turf Cutters of Éireann demonstration is to highlight the concerns of rural people about preserving their right to harvest turf, but they also want the power stations to be open to prevent “extreme energy poverty for all” during the energy crisis.

It's one of the most contentious topics in the country at present, an imaginary battleground for an urban rural battle.

Many citizens of the Midlands of Ireland are no more than a five minute car drive from vast brown swathes of bogland. For them to have dictates issued from the concrete capital of the country, where 1.2 million people are crammed into 123 square miles, makes no sense.

This is not the first time turf cutters staged protests against the European law barring them from digging protected bogland to obtain fuel.

Locally Sunday's demonstrators will meet at the power station in Shannonbridge to highlight what they see as the “closure of bogs”.

Bogs are formed over thousands of years in areas with poor drainage and high rainfall. Traditionally small-scale turf producers cut by hand using a sleán. Modern methods of machine harvesting have increased the volume gathered in a season.

It's been a long journey for both sides of the argument since the 1992 Habitats Directive. This was an EU legislative act to ensure the conservation of a wide range of rare, threatened or endemic animal and plant species. turf cutting was to be banned immediately in 1999.

Since the successive environmental reports suggest that our raised and blanket bogs continue to decline.

“There is a huge level of public support for what we are doing,” the local organiser of Turf Cutters of Éireann demonstration said,”There are a lot of things going on with the bog at the moment. We are waiting for legislation to be changed since 2019.

They promised to do it in a few months, but we have got no support. In fact the opposite. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is constantly trying to stop us from harvesting turf.”

Last September the European Commission called on Ireland to ban turf cutting in Natura 2000 lands designated as special areas of conservation to protect bogland.

At the end of last month Irish turf, smoky coal and wet wood were banned for retail sale after a final sign-off by Environment, Climate and Communications Minister Eamon Ryan.

Outlining the goal of Sunday's demonstration in Shannonbridge the man said: “I want to be allowed to cut and harvest turf.

They are trying to do away with turf altogether. What will the country people do if they haven't got turf? I've been cutting turf since I was 16 when I left school, I'm 53 now. The people who cut turf are concerned. What are they going to use as an alternative?”

He believes that the implications of a ban on turf will be significant: “It will be a shocking hardship on people. Look at what the ESB costs are for people at the moment.

“If you spend €500 on turf you will heat your home. You won't be sweating, but you won't be cold either. You will survive on it. They are trying to put a stop to it and that is wrong.”

The Turf Cutters of Éireann demonstration takes place at Shannonbridge power station this Sunday, November 20 at 2pm.