The Peat Bogs of the Irish Republic: A Problem in Land Use

Abstract

presented by the peat bogs of Northern Ireland and the relatively few steps that are being taken to use them more fully. Bog reclamation is a more serious problem in the Irish Republic than in Northern Ireland, because in the former the land, more than in any other country of Western Europe, is the main source of wealth, since resources both of power and of industrial minerals are meagre, industrial development has been slight and the merchant marine is very small. Peat bogs cover about 3 million acres of the 17-3 million acres of the Irish Republic, a greater proportion of the land surface than in any other European country except Finland. This alone indicates that their economic exploitation poses a serious national problem in land use. It is impossible to give an exact figure of land covered by bogs because of the large acreage cut for domes? tic use each year. Table I shows PurcelPs estimate of 1920. According to the Secre? tary of Bord na Mona, the state-sponsored peat fuel development board, no more recent estimates have been made of the total acreage of peat in Ireland (personal com? munication 5/4/1960). The distribution of peat bogs in the Irish Republic is shown in Figure 1. A distinction between those bogs lying below and those above 500 feet has been made on this map in order to give some indication of their potential economic usefulness in terms of accessibility. The major bogs are located in the central counties, principally in Offaly, Laoighis, Kildare, Westmeath and Longford. There the peat has accumulated at low levels as the result of impeded drainage rather than high rainfall. Because of their accessibility and their extent and depth (Table 1) these bogs have now become a major focus of bog utilization schemes in Western Europe. The belt of low-lying bogs extends further to the north-west into Roscommon, Leitrim, Sligo and Mayo. Other areas of lowland peat (mainly high rainfall blanket bog) occur in Donegal and Galway; but, in general, the bogs tend to be smaller and shallower in the western counties. The peat of the south and east of Ireland comprises for the most part only a thin skin on the tops of the hills. Mechanized methods of peat fuel production.?In the summer of 1955?through the kindness of Bord na Mona?the writer studied on the ground all the major schemes of peat fuel production in the central counties (see Dwyer, 1958-a). Unlike the position in Northern Ireland, peat won on a large scale by mechanized methods is now making a major contribution to the solution of the fuel problem of the coal-deficient Irish Table I