Sir, – The Taoiseach, speaking in the Dáil this week, said that “traditional practices” of turf-cutting peat bogs would continue, despite the proposed ban on the commercial sale of turf. Is he not aware that turf-cutting is now very little practised in a traditional manner, but now involves machines cutting drains across whole bogs, then diggers to load peat into caterpillar-tracked dump trucks, followed by processing into lines of peat laid across the bog margin to dry?
There is very little difference between commercial peat exploitation by companies for horticulture and mushroom growing on the one hand, and the use of contractors to machine-cut the peat for local domestic use. Both lead to destruction of our bogs, and all the negative consequences of carbon emissions and biodiversity loss that follow.
The Government must support rural communities to transition rapidly from turf burning to other forms of home heating, such as subsidised electricity. – Yours, etc,
HENRY LAMB,
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Clara,
Co Offaly.
Sir, – Turf is the most polluting of the solid fuels, producing both lots of CO2 and lots of air-polluting particulate matter.
For this reason, a priority should be made to phase turf-burning out, as soon as possible.
Eamon Ryan needs to come up with a timetable to eventually stop the burning of turf and a scheme to help households which burn turf for heating to transition to a cleaner fuel.
This means identifying how many burn turf, the improvements needed to make those houses efficient enough to use substitutes like heatpumps, and a financing scheme which spreads the cost of the upgrades over many years at very low interest rates. Some grant aid, some self-financing, but payment over long-term with low interest, are vital for families with a low income to reduce the weekly burden.
Transitioning to a completely new way of heating our homes is expensive and needs to be looked at from a slightly different perspective than a simple commercial short-term, high-interest loan from a commercial bank.
In order to help the transition, a new loan scheme is needed which is essentially break-even only, to reduce the burden on lower-income families and help the smooth transition to fossil-free heating.
When we have all adopted the new technologies, we can go back to fully commercial loans. – Yours, etc,
DAVID DORAN,
Bagenalstown,
Co Carlow.
Sir, – Advice to Eamon Ryan: stop digging. – Yours, etc,
TOM GILSENAN,
Dublin 9.
Sir, – The turf war is similar to the water charges debate. In both cases, people assumed that the resource was free. The only cost for turf is hiring the commercial contractor to cut the turf. Heath and environmental costs are ignored. – Yours, etc,
P MONAHAN,
Cork.