Turf war: Rural TDs fear Ryan’s ban plan is just the beginning
Agriculture minister was ‘unable’ to give TD basic assurances on cutting rights
RURAL TDs fear the proposed ban by Green Party leader Eamon Ryan on the sale of turf is only the prologue to a total ban on turf cutting.
The unease was sparked by responses from Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue to queries by Independent TD Carol Nolan on the level of security attaching itself to turbary rights to cut turf.
Mr Ryan has previously claimed that his intention is to merely ban the retail sale of turf and that those who have turbary rights can continue to cut turf.
A turbary right is the right to cut and carry away turf from a specific plot of bogland. But Ms Nolan said she had been seriously ‘alarmed by a reply I received from the Minister for Agriculture, Food, and the Marine in respect of these turbary rights’.
Ms Nolan asked the minister: ‘If persons in possession of a folio number for bog plots will not have their turbary rights removed or infringed upon by either the State or any private company or semiState company.’
Mr McConalogue responding warned: ‘As a general principle, it is settled law that private property rights (including turbary rights) are not absolute in nature and may be delimited by law, as occasion requires, with a view to reconciling their exercise with the exigencies of the common good. Accordingly the exercise of turbary rights by persons in possession of a folio number for bog plots with associated turbary rights are subject to lawful regulation by the State which could in some cases include a limitation or removal on the exercise of those rights.
‘In the circumstances, it is not possible to give the Deputy the assurance sought on behalf of persons in possession of a folio number for bog plots with associated turbary rights.’
Ms Nolan said: ‘I am alarmed by the tone and emphasis of the Minister’s reply. It is just over two months since the Government almost tore itself apart on the very same issue.’
On a statutory basis, she said: ‘It has been absolutely clear since at least 1951 that turbary rights in respect of bogland mean the right to cut and to carry away turf from the bogland and include the right to prepare and to store on the bogland any turf cut therefrom.’
Now though, she said ‘the Minister is unable or unwilling to provide basic assurances that all persons in possession of folio numbers for bog plots with associated turbary rights will have their rights protected’.
‘The Minister states in his reply to me that, “as a general principle, it is a matter of settled law that private property rights are not absolute in nature and may be delimited in law,’ she said.
Rural people, she said, ‘will be especially concerned about references to a common good.’ The difficulty,
‘Alarmed by the reply I received’
‘This is a political miscalculation’
she warned, ‘is that the ‘common good’ as understood by this Green-dominated Government encompasses a radical climate and decarbonisation agenda that is in stark contrast with the practical priorities of the vast majority of ordinary people.’
She added: ‘The Minister’s reply provides no comfort whatsoever to those people who have raised this matter with me.’
It also provides no indication, she said, ‘that he even understands the sense of threat that these people would like addressed’.
Ms Nolan warned that ‘if their ‘rights’ are treated as a purely secondary consideration this is a political miscalculation this Minister and this Government will sorely regret’.