And ‘the van’ – now ‘the digger’

Ruining

From my own experience in Roscommon, I totally agree. Machine cutting destroys the bog. Hand cutting conserves it…

What do you think the JCB the Garda tried to seize was being used for?nI doubt it was to transport them to bog to hand cut turf.

I see no jcb. But then again you rarely see them in the city either.

Well done john joe, this generalization and trivialization of JCBs and all plant machinery will not stand!!

well said

Hilarious!!!!

Dermot, nobody can deny that Bord na Mona have destroyed the vast majority of the bogs but when most of the damage was done the importance of the bogs was not known or acknowledged. The bogs are seen as a source of fuel and nothing more by many when they are of much greater value to the country if they are not cut and drained.

There is no doubt that Bord na Mona should not go on as they have but that must be dealt with under different legislation as they are not cutting protected sites. Turf cutters and their supporters cannot go on using Bord na Mona, Coillte, ESB etc. as a reason that they should be allowed to continue braking the law and destroying the environment. If we were all to follow that line of reasoning there would be mayhem because there would be no point to ever following the law because there is always someone not paying tax, not wearing a seabelt, not looking after their slurry pit properly etc. etc.

*breaking

And is using one of these machines a part of the heritage?

Turf cutting is part of our hertiage eh?
Just because people have being doing stuff for years does not make it ok in modern times,in this case they are destroying land that should be kept for future generations. Its small minded and shortsighted.

Years ago people used to herd cattle from Kerry to Wexford or even further on main roads over 1-2 weeks, should this still happen “because its part of our heritage”. Think of the mayhem it would cause.

in many small towns throughout Ireland if there’s a funeral the funeral will walk through the town on the way to the graveyard causing all the traffic to stop, given this is also “part of our heritage” I guess this would be ok in the middle of Dublin, Cork, Galway etc for every funeral and sure if the funeral has to cut across a motorway thats ok to.

who knew that 100′s of years ago turf cutters also used JCB diggers and machines to cut turf just like they do today, ah that good old heritage again i guess.

Don’t be talking nonsense dan….

@ Barry, I don’t get what traffic jams have to do with turf? My guess is you’re a city person. Turf is important in many rural areas and pen-pushers in Belgium obviously don’t have a clue. Yes, conservation is also important, but these are the people who banned crooked bananas and actually arrested Irish fishermen for not throwing out captured fish of the wrong species. And they have now reversed that law. And you consider them wise?? They are children.

This could backfire on the turf cutters – heritage and diggers do not mix well. As far as I know they have some reasonable arguments, but burning their own equipment won’t do them any favours. It doesn’t smell half as nice anyway….

Sorry to break it to you pete, but the whole straight bananas thing was one big urban myth…

Popsicle Pete – just to clarify, the crooked bananas story was a myth that the daily mail invented

Popsicle Pete, check your facts first off….the banana thing never happened. Using stuff like that makes you look like an idiot.

Secondly, I’m far from a city boy that I can assure you, so you can throw this assumption out the window too,

Thirdly, the excuse of persevering heritage is being used as an excuse, if you want a non traffic related example then try this.

Many people years ago used to go to their local woods to cut down tree’s to heat their homes. Now as time passed this had to change or we’d have no woods, but stopping these people from cutting down trees ruined their heritage and also meant they finally had to actually pay for a fuel source to heat their homes (coal, oil etc).

Now any sane logical person could see that what they were doing was not sustainable, sure they might count it as their heritage but it was destroying our woodlands and we have so little of it left,

Now lets use this example with bogs, here we people using machines to dig up our bogs (very far from traditional), the bogs most certainly don’t grow back like tree’s and we have these people also using the excuse of heritage.

But what they are doing can’t continue to go on because if they keep doing this we’ll have no bogs in the future and the eu rightly see’s this.

As we’ve learned from our history often it takes a third party (in this case the eu) to see what idiotic actions people take in their local environment and what sort of knock on affects these actions have. In this case the actions result in little or no bogs in the future and thats unfair on future generations.

Right on Barry, given the choice between burning the bogs and preserving the unique habitats they support I choose the latter.

I hate to break it to you but we are pretty much paying that already, as we owe…

When your talking about bogs and farm subsidies its the other way about…

Give the German jokes a Break the sad fact is Irish politicians fecked up and Europe stepped in to support us.

Pat it might come as a surprise to you but it is also Irish people who want the law enforced and the bogs protected. Can’t blame the EU & FG for everything when the law doesn’t suit you. Same people got plenty of money in grants and schemes funded by the EU and were happy to take them, you can’t have your cake and eat it. The bogs are the last remnants of a great heritage and were selected on scientific criteria as the best of the last remaining bogs and are legally protected under Irish law. They have been illegally cut for more than 10years so this cessation has not suddenly happened overnight, they have had ample time to seek alternatives and comply with the law. They have also been offered a number of different types of compensation for the next 15 years which is also plenty of time to look at alternatives. Times change, the importance of bogs was not known in the past but it is now and so we should understand that damaging practices such as turf cutting can no longer continue.

If the government had it in their possession how exactly were the protesters able to get right next to it? Mighty suspect that it just went on fire randomly like that……some people might suggest that perhaps the protesters may have had some hand or act in that in order to gain publicity for their cause.

Of course in this instance the machine should not have been in the place it was in the first place, I hope the chap has it insured cause he’s going to need that insurance now.