The position of thousands of hectares of rehabilitated peatlands with regard to the Nature Restoration Law (NRL) needs to be clarified as a matter of urgency, the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association (INHFA) has claimed.

Serious doubt has been cast on the eligibility of 20,000ha of restored State-owned bogs for Ireland’s NRL targets after the Department of Housing failed to confirm that the lands qualified.

The Department confirmed that only lands with works “underway” when the law comes into force in Ireland in the second week of August will be eligible for inclusion in State’s inventory of restored and rewet bogs.

“The reply [from the Department of Housing] confirms what we have understood all along,” said INHFA president Vincent Roddy.

“That works on lands, such as rewetting, that have been completed are not eligible for inclusion as part of Ireland’s restoration targets for the NRL,” he added.

“Over the last two years we have heard politicians, both MEPs and Oireachtas members, outline how all the targets, especially around rewetting, can be delivered from State-owned land,” Roddy maintained.

“This is a fact that we have always had major concerns around and I think in everyone's interests that we now need an inventory of what qualifies as restored and as rewet,” he said.

“And what area of State peatland and private peatland will need to be restored and rewet,” the INHFA leader added."

Roscommon-Galway TD Michael Fitzmaurice said the Department of Housing’s comments confirmed publicly what they had been saying privately for some time.

“It’s a big worry because there’s a lot of hectares involved,” Fitzmaurice said.

While Fitzmaurice predicted that Bord na Móna and Coillte had the potential to cover Ireland’s NRL targets up to 2035 of thereabouts, he warned that the possible exclusion of the 20,000ha means that more farmed peatlands could be pulled into the mix at that stage.

Under the NRL Ireland must retore 36,000ha of drained peatlands by 2030, with 9,600ha of this total having to be rewet.

By 2040 the target increases to 48,000ha of peatlands to be restored, with 16,000ha rewet. The total area increases to 60,000ha of peatlands restored and 20,000ha rewet by 2050.