Around 18,000 jobs supported by Ireland’s horticultural sector are at immediate risk unless a workable system for the sustainable harvesting of horticultural peat is introduced, the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Food has heard.
Growing Media Ireland (GMI) – the representative body for the majority of growing media producers in the country – told the committee the horticultural sector is “facing an imminent crisis” and urged members to press the Government to “end years of policy paralysis by introducing a practical, workable regulatory structure”.
GMI said such a system is “long overdue and would finally implement repeated Government commitments and the recommendations of multiple official reports that have yet to be acted upon”.
The organisation is calling for a new framework, which it said would be similar to those operating in other European countries, that would allow the sustainable harvesting of horticultural peat while research into alternatives continues.
A growing medium is a material, other than soil on the spot, in which plants are grown and is often referred to as substrate or potting soil.
GMI Chair John Neenan said growing media producers are in “regulatory limbo”, adding “the Government has commissioned four reports since 2019, all of which concluded that while alternatives to horticultural peat should continue to be developed, Ireland needs a functioning mechanism to guarantee a domestic supply in the meantime. Yet no workable system has ever been put in place.”
Mr Neenan also said: “We fully accept that peat extraction must be subject to appropriate environmental safeguards, including environmental screening and, where required, Environmental Impact Assessment.
“Our concern is not the existence of environmental regulation, but the absence of a clear, consistent and workable pathway to comply with it. If the Government continues to delay, it is jobs, growers and rural Ireland that will pay the price.”
According to GMI, the current application process for harvesting peat on areas under 30 hectares is “unworkable, incoherent and impracticable, and not a single operator has successfully secured planning permission or a licence under the current regime since 2019”.
As a result, it said businesses cannot plan with confidence – putting thousands of jobs at risk.
Peat harvesting is not prohibited under either Irish or EU law, and GMI claims the domestic horticultural sector requires just 600 hectares – 0.004% of Ireland’s total peatlands – to meet its needs.
The representative body said Ireland’s horticultural sector contributed €644 million to agricultural output in 2025 and supports 7,000 jobs in primary production and a further 11,000 in amenity and downstream services, with the vast majority located in rural communities.
