I welcome the Minister of State and thank him for taking the time to come to the House for this Adjournment matter.
Following the publication of the first comprehensive assessment of the status of protected species and their habitats the Grim report detailed that many of these species are in danger. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, rightly plans to take serious action to protect these rare species. He must be concerned about our environment and take appropriate action in this regard. However, it is wrong to link blame for the desecration of our flora and fauna to rural people who have being cutting turf for their own use for generations and in so doing caring for and respecting our heritage.
The Minister of State and the Cathaoirleach are from rural areas. Cutting turf is part of the culture of every small town and village on this island. Long summer days are spent saving and bringing home turf. I am one of those lucky youngsters who spent many happy idyllic days in the bog jumping drains while the adults did the work. Sentiment aside, rural people feel very aggrieved by the ending of the ten year derogation that allowed the continued cutting of turf for personal use.
The scourge and threat to rare species of wildlife in the years of economic boom is the lack of Government investment in the required infrastructure to support the intense development of sewage systems. According to the report habitats associated with water were considered to be in bad condition. This does not surprise me and reinforces my point that the simple respectful cutting of turf by the local people who take only what they need is not to blame for the destruction of our flora and fauna.
The people who have cut and used turf for generations, those who have preserved and saved our bogs, are now being punished. Large-scale peat abstraction by developers has destroyed most of our bogs. Some developers have exported millions of tonnes of peat to the EU. Surely this is the reason the rare species are being destroyed. Ordinary people feel disenfranchised by this Government and by EU law. Worthy and worried people are unable to get a fair hearing or, indeed, representation of any sort.
I raised this matter on the Adjournment, as I did on the Order of Business yesterday, to get clarification for ordinary people, first, that they might have clarification concerning their fundamental right to continue to cut turf for their own use, by sleán or otherwise, and second, to hear that turf cutting will continue and that the Government will honour the 2004 agreement negotiated and agreed with the farming pillar.
I refer to fuel poverty and to the Energy Conservation Bill 2008. I remind the Minister of State that many low income families in rural Ireland will be living in cold, damp homes because they rely on turf as their main source of fuel. The practice of cutting turf for personal use is not to blame for the endangerment of rare species of flora and fauna. The turf cutters of rural Ireland will not be railroaded and ignored, and they must be allowed to continue to exercise their turbary rights.
