A policy adviser with the farming co-operative group Copa-Cogeca has withdrawn remarks made before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture on 5 October in an interpretation given on the European Commission’s proposed nature restoration law.

It had been said by Copa’s Niall Curley that there would be a limit of 20% on peatlands that had been used for peat extraction as a proportion of drained peatlands the Commission nature restoration law.

“I had misread it at the time, and thus misinformed you, the joint committee, on the specificities of this legal proposal. For this, I humbly apologise for misleading you in my presentation and discussion, and I withdraw my remarks,” Curley wrote in a letter to committee members. Curley said in the letter that Bord na Móna could limit to 20%-25% its contribution towards restoration targets, given that the Commission estimated over 350,000ha of “wetlands” are in “bad condition”.

“If we simply assume that the land that Bord na Móna owns and manages is automatically under the ‘bad condition’ marker, then the Bord na Móna land actually still only covers about 20%-25% of the total targeted amount of land to be restored,” he said.

The clarification came after Ireland South MEP Mick Wallace wrote to the committee stating that Curley’s position on the contribution of drained, excavated peatlands to the rewetting targets was “not true”.

Chair of the joint committee Jackie Cahill told the Irish Farmers Journal that the law has become a priority for the committee and that Ireland should now work to build “an alliance” with other EU member states to push for more measured environmental targets.

The proposal came as a “shot out of the blue” and the committee will meet “three or four” times on it in January, Cahill said.

The proposed Nature Restoration Regulation is currently being negotiated in line with “standing legislative procedure,” a Department of Housing spokesperson told the Irish Farmers Journal.