Election candidate Martin Daly met with Michael Fitzmaurice from Glenamaddy, Chairman of the Turf Cutters and Contractors Association at their meeting in the Castlecourt Hotel over the weekend.
Huge crowd attend meeting on turf-cutting and SAC’s
Anton McNulty
The issue of turf cutting and the impact of Special Areas of Conservation on everyday life in parts of Mayo looks like it will be a major issue in the run-in to the General Election following a public meeting in Westport on Sunday afternoon.
There was standing room only in the Castlecourt Hotel with close to 500 estimated to have attended the meeting which was hosted by the Turf Cutters and Contractors Association (TCCA). While the primary concern was the future of turf cutting in the county, it was the designation of land in Mayo as Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) and Special Protected Areas (SPA) and their consequences on life in the county which was one of the main talking point.
The main speaker from Mayo was Independent councillor Michael Holmes who explained that since the EU Habitats Directive which introduced SAC’s was signed into law in 1997, there has been a continuous ‘drip-feed’ of land being designated. He said that 20 per cent of land in Mayo has been designated and this affects farmers, people looking for planning permission and people cutting turf.
Cllr Holmes said that farmers living in Connemara and the Nephin Range in Mayo have until today (Tuesday) to take their animals from the hills because it is in a SPA, and claimed they were not receiving sufficient compensation for their loss of income. He added that people living outside SACs were also affected and explained that anyone living within 15km of an SAC and looks to build a house is obliged to carry out an environmental report which can cost up to €1,000 to compile.
He called on the people of Mayo to stand behind Roscommon and other turfcutters to ensure their way of life continues into the future.
“If you are caught cutting turf this year in Roscommon and you don’t stop they will have a bed in Castlerea for you, but if you are sick they won’t have a bed in the hospital. We don’t have any raised bog of significance in Mayo but we have a lot of blanket bogs but there are restrictions on them too. In an SAC you can’t use a sausage machine and if that bog is cut you are not allowed to open a new bank. Wouldn’t that be some legacy for us to hand onto the future generation.
“The turfcutters of Roscommon and Mayo are not looking for compensation, we are looking for our basic rights to cut turf. I would just like to say to the politicians of parties who will be in government in the next couple of weeks, we are going to stick with this until we get a breakthrough and we see that people are allowed to cut turf. There might have problems with the financial banks but they will have a bigger problem with the turf banks if they don’t sort this out.
“It is our right to farm our land, it is our right to develop our land and it is a right for young people to build on their parents land, and is right to cut our bogs,” he said.
Michael Fitzmaurice, the chairman of the TCCA said the introduction of SACs had been in the planning since the 1980’s and blamed successive Fianna Fáil/PD, Fine Gael/Labour and Fianna Fáil/Green Governments for continuing the policy of land designation. He said these policies were not coming from Brussels but from Dublin and accused them of turning the west into a ‘National Theme Park’.
“Every county in the country was to get a certain amount [of designated areas] but alas this has failed and it was ‘To Hell or to Connacht’ we got the most. It was supposed to be done in the interest of the people, but it was the case of telling the people one thing and tell Europe another thing. I call on each and every politician to stand by the people who elected them and work together for the betterment of the country.
“Sadly when I look back over the years I have seen politicians trying to justify why we lost our fishing in the common good, why we lost our gas and oil in the common good and how they tried to make farmers redundant in the common good. And now they try to justify the stopping of people cutting their turf for their own fires. We have seen rural Ireland pillaged and blunders, is this is in the common good,” he said.
Candidates give their stance on turfcutting
Politicians and general election candidates who attended the meeting were asked to give their views on turf cutting and outline their party’s strategy.
Fine Gael TD, John O’Mahony explained that under Fine Gael turfcutters would be allowed to cut their turf in 2011 and following this turfcutters will be part of management committee to achieve a resolution to the issue.
“A meaningful consultation with an independent chairman will be set up allowing you to be on the committee along with scientists. You will have a major stakehold in this committee and you will have a major say on where we go from here,” he said
Mr Fitzmaurice said he met with Phil Hogan, Fine Gael’s spokesperson on the Environment who told them he could not guarantee them the right to cut turf. Mr Fitzmaurice added that the Habitat’s directive had to be renegotiated and added that if Fine Gael could negotiate the IMF deal, ‘they could negotiate this no problem’.
Labour candidate, Dr Jerry Cowley said it was a right for people to cut their own bogs and it was wrong to stop it. ”Serious questions need to asked and serious questions need to be answered. I will fight back for all we lost and all I can say I will fight for the right of people to cut their own turf,” he said.
Sinn Féin’s Rose Conway-Walsh said that her party would uphold the right of domestic turf cutters on raised and blanket bogs while respecting conservation. She said that turf cutting has had a less environmental impact than what it’s opponents claimed.
“The Department of Environment’s own report known as the Fernandez Report estimates that less than one per cent of raised bogs was lost in the last ten years due to turf cutting, refuting the minister’s assertion that the figure is closer to one third. We also note that the amount of turf cut for domestic use is miniscule in comparison to the large-scale commercial operations of some companies in our bogs,” she said.
Independent candidate Michael Kilcoyne also backed the rights of the turfcutters saying that during the cold winter, it was the one fuel when everything else was frozen which kept people warm. Another Independent, Dermot McDonnell explained that he works in renewable energy and the main obstacle of developing on an SAC was not with Europe but from ‘within the pale’.
