He put it to Mr Noonan that equivalent journeys for domestically sourced stocks averaged 10km, a claim previously made by industry body Growing Media Ireland (GMI), who said last weekend’s shipment was necessary due to rapidly depleting peat reserves. a 3,000km journey by sea to Ireland, where a further 200 trucks meet the ship to unload the peat and deliver it to plants,” said Sinn Féin Cavan-Monaghan TD Matt Carthy, who acknowledged the peat-reliant mushroom industry was of significant importance to his constituency. “We now have a situation where shiploads, huge shiploads, are being imported into Ireland. He was addressing the Oireachtas Agriculture Committee on Tuesday, where anger was expressed following reports in The Irish Times that the country’s first horticultural peat shipment of 3,600 tonnes arrived on Saturday. Minister of State for Heritage Malcolm Noonan has denied an unfolding crisis in the peat harvesting sector is the product of a “green agenda”, insisting the Government is bound by planning laws relating to large-scale extraction.
