The current calls to reverse the ban on the sale of turf as a means to deal with the rising fuel costs is just a distraction, a red herring from the real energy development issues that our political system is too timid to tackle.

In the first instance, despite the ban on selling turf, online there are plenty of adverts on various social media sites offering turf for sale.

Also, the sale of turf, in my experience, was transacted on a person to person basis and this practice was never banned, and even if banned would be impossible to police.

Turf is not going to provide an immediate solution to the current  energy problems because at this time of year, preparations are only taking place to harvest turf.

'Bringing the turf home' can take months and is weather dependent.

Alternatives to turf

A more immediate means of accessing a solid fuel that has nearly twice the energy density of turf would be an organised removal  and processing of the many thousands of dead and dying ash trees that currently threaten thousands of kilometres of our roadside electricity and telecommunications infrastructure.

In the longer term, property owners - both urban and rural - have to allow for the development of our electricity transmission and storage infrastructure.

Currently in Ireland, €1.3 million of wind energy is wasted on a daily basis due to transmission and storage shortcomings with the grid network.

The north south interconnector, a vital project to stabilise the energy grid on the island of Ireland first proposed in 2006, is beginning construction in Northern Ireland but remains mired in planning and legal resistance south of the border.

Ireland has to come to terms with its hypocritical stance on nuclear energy.

We import nuclear generated electricity from Britain, and this will increase when the celtic interconnector with France is operational.

The use of nuclear fission for electricity generation is legally prohibited in Ireland under Section 18(6) of the Electricity Regulation Act 1999.

This statute explicitly states that orders for electricity generation cannot provide for the use of nuclear fission.

This ban is further supported by planning legislation.

To allow for informed mature consideration, this needs to be removed so that recent proposals from Engineers Ireland for the development of small modular nuclear reactors can be given full consideration. 

Calls to remove the ban on commercial selling of turf is an easy populist call by politicians and an opportunity to give the greens another kicking, but does nothing to deal with the challenges our energy generation and transmission infrastructure faces in rural and urban Ireland. 

From Brian Meaney, Co. Clare