Tradition is gone

The festive season may have one less tradition this year for many people - an open fire fuelled by peat briquettes.

The last peat briquette factory closed in the early summer of 2023 when the Derrinlough facility in Offaly rolled out its last batch of peat briquettes, thus ending a traditional home heating fuel source for many homes across the country.

Peat briquettes were first pressed in the 1920s but, it was not until the 1930s when production of the home heating fuel ramped up. Mass sale of peat briquettes began in earnest when the De Valera led Fianna Fáil government looked at the country's bogs as a way of self sufficiency in the face of British coal imports.

Plans for a peat industry were first put in place as early as 1917 when a report was put together by professors in University College Dublin. Due to the War of Independence and Civil War, from 1919-1923, the report was shelved.

In 1934 the report was resurrected and used to form the basis for the establishment of the Turf Development Board.

In 1936 new rules were introduced to boost the sale of peat briquettes. Fuel merchants across the country had to register with the government and receive a certificate which had to be displayed in their place of business. They had to sell peat briquettes alongside coal and any fuel merchants selling more coal than turf faced jail time of three months!

A less stringent way of boosting peat sales came in the form of the All-Ireland Turf Cutting Championships. The first competition was held at Allenswood, Co Kildare in 1934 and like the National Ploughing Championships of modern times, the annual turf cutting event was held at a different location each year and always attended by the Taoiseach, government ministers and a plethora of TDs.

TIMES CHANGE

The peat briquette was not welcomed by all. Those in cities such as Dublin had long looked down on what they considered the 'fuel of the poor countryman.' Coal was always their fuel of choice, even if it was seen as unpatriotic.

Adverts in the 1930s for the Shamrock Turf Briquettes called peat the national fuel. Similar adverts claimed that buying peat briquettes was the patriotic thing to do as it was supporting Irish industry.

In order to sell the idea of a peat fuelled home to the Irish public a lot of time and money was spent on the publicity of peat briquettes during the 1930s but, it was the outbreak of World War II which resulted in a greater uptake of the fuel.

Households dependent on coal had to switch wholly to turf and peat briquettes when coal supplies from Britain dwindled. By then, the Turf Development Board had been renamed Bord na Móna which oversaw a boom in the peat industry in Ireland.

Now in the 21st century the peat industry has been consigned to the past and that once familiar sight of the peat briquette home fire is no more.