An Taisce is very concerned by the findings of the damning EPA report on 38 large scale illegal peat extraction operations occurring across seven counties throughout the country, and strongly supports the report’s call for local authorities to employ their powers to ensure full enforcement of the law.

The environmental degradation caused by this unauthorised peat extraction has a major impact on nature conservation and essential ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, water filtration and flood attenuation, and highly unique floral and faunal diversity. 

This extraction cannot be reconciled with our national and European environmental obligations to protect our critically important peatland habitats. Indeed, Ireland has been subject to legal actions at European level for well over two decades on the peat extraction issue, including a referral to the European Court in 2024 for failure to halt extraction in legally protected nature conservation sites.  

While the scale, extent and impacts of unauthorised peat extraction are wide-ranging, the extraction at the 38 sites covered by the EPA report does not fall under family-related turbary rights for personal use but instead reflects large-scale illegal commercial harvesting for profit and, primarily, for export: “These illegal operations contribute to an export trade of 300,000 tonnes of peat annually, valued at almost €40 million.”  This raises serious questions about how such significant quantities of an illegally extracted product can be exported and what customs and permitting processes are allowing this.

Ultimately, there is a significant and systemic failure by local authorities to apply their enforcement powers in the area of peat extraction.

While the enforcement of extraction on sites above 50 hectares is the responsibility of the EPA, enforcement below the 50ha threshold falls to local authorities. In response to the EPA report, some local authorities have pointed to the complexity, lengthiness, and resource-intensive nature of peat extraction enforcement cases. While there is certainly a need to ensure urgent resourcing of legal enforcement capacity, local authorities must still take accountability for their critical role in enforcing the law around peat extraction and failures to do so to date.

As custodians of over 20,000 acres of bogland, An Taisce has a long-standing track record in leading campaigns to preserve these vitally important ecosystems and will continue to be a strong advocate for bogs as an important climate, biodiversity and cultural resource. Therefore, we echo the EPA’s call for local authorities to immediately take urgent enforcement action with regard to illegal peat extraction. However, we also call on the Government to drive coordinated action at national level to bolster enforcement, ensure consistency of approach, and ensure adequate resourcing for holding transgressions of environmental law to account. 

Specifically, we call on the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to urgently respond to the EPA report and provide a plan of action. We note that the new Planning and Development Act 2024 gives the Minister powers to establish regional enforcement bodies to tackle activities such as peat extraction. While such bodies, if created, have the potential to improve enforcement, these provisions of the Act have not yet come into force, and the evidence in EPA's report clearly indicates the need for effective action immediately.

Tackling the illegal peat extraction crisis is long overdue, and the lack of serious action is hampering our ability to respond to the twin climate and biodiversity emergencies. National government and local authorities can no longer allow our boglands to be so blatantly exploited and destroyed.