Firstly let me say to you that you have done us proud here today by turning out in massive numbers. We have asked you to come and you have delivered. We must have at least 4,500 people here. We have now arrived as an organisation that MUST be listened to.

We are here today because we have not been listened to by the Irish Government.

We are here today because last April the good people of this country were criminalised for cutting turf on a certain 32 bog complexes or 165 bog townlands.

We are here today because this state has more pain planned for the turf cutters of a further 23 bog complexes at the end of 2011.

We are here today because at the end 2014 a ban on yet another 75 bog complexes is planned.

We are here today because the future of all turf cutting is under threat.

We have engaged in all processes of consultation that have been put before us.

We have submitted our plan for the future of turf cutting to the interdepartmental working group on the cessation of turf cutting.

We were told that this committee would publish its decision on October 31 2009. They did not live up to this promise. We waited and waited. It was only in April of last year that we were to find out about their decision. Did they write to us the main stakeholders in all this to tell us of the outcome? NO they didn’t. Did they phone us? No they didn’t. What they did was they told the national media first. What sort of a way was this to treat the very people who in good faith engaged in a consultation process?

We have also made a presentation to the Oireachtas all party committee on the Environment. Every politician we met that day told us they would back us 100%. They promised us the earth the moon and the stars. Their promises have now proven to be worthless.

4 months ago we met with NPWS officials in Cloonchambers bog in order to explain in detail what we thought should be done. It was on that day that the penny finally dropped that we were dealing with people who had absolutely no management plan for what they were proposing. It was on that day that we were told that the NPWS would be forcing through this ban whether we THE PEOPLE LIKE IT OR NOT.

We can learn a lot from history and on this issue we can learn an immense amount.

The following is an extract from a book called “Father Michael O’ Flanagan Republican priest” by Desmond Greaves. I am honoured to share the same blood line as this man.

The Cliffoney Turbary

Quite often small events in themselves show people how they stand. The authorities began to use the emergency of war to make inroads on the rights of the people, and one example took place at Cliffoney, where the Congested District Boards announced that turf banks which had been available to the Cliffoney people for generations were to be reserved for its own tenant.

It was then that Father O’ Flanagan showed that he had not forgotten he had sprung from the people. He conducted a long correspondence with the bureaucrats of the C.D.B without success. Many a man would then have regarded his duty as done and told the people they had no choice but to submit. Not so Father O’ Flanagan.

On June 29^th 1915, he asked his congregation to wait outside the chapel after mass, where he addressed them as follows:-

“The people are sick of promises” he said “ what I advise the people to do is for every man who wants a turf bank and can work a turf spade to go to the waste bog tomorrow and cut plenty of turf. You need not be in the least afraid. God put this bog there for the use of the people and if you are not as well fortified as if you were in a German trench, you will be a formidable opponent enough if anybody chances to come along and interfere with you.

I’ll go myself, and if anybody has a spare turf spade I’ll show you that I can cut turf too.

“Have we been quiet too long? Are we going to let poor little children shiver to death with cold next winter for want of a fire? I think if we start tomorrow morning at nine o’ clock it would be a good thing”.

Next Morning 160 people assembled outside Cliffoney chapel and marched from Father Flanagan’s house to the bog. They cut 12,000 cubic feet of turf every day till August 16^th.

So I conclude. If they succeeded then we too can succeed now. We must succeed because if not it will be more than turf at stake when they next come calling for your land.

Comments

Submitted by Hurler-on-the-Ditch [somewhere in the bogdocks of Ireland-West] @ 10:57 am, 26th Feb '11
Regardless of WHO gets in, and it will probably be the wrong crowd, with wrong policies. Now is the time to "pitch out" all the faceless ones,, "the uncivil fats cats" in all the departments .Starting at the top and working down. These are the ones who FAILED. Since in reality they rather than the "brain dead" politicians are supposed to run the country.. Then put in a new "gang" of YOUNG fresh faced graduates, and pay them only 40% of what the "fat-cats" got. As for the politicians; it is time for reform: 30% of what the last lot was paid for openers, and less "perks". Also make them work longer, no 99 weeks holidays a year. Use the "bin-men" as a "bench-mark" for politicians pay. Why should they get more than the "bin-men" for sitting on their behinds all day? As for what they produce- laws- lets apply the "plain English/11 year old test". If a bunch of 11 year olds cannot understand the language of a law then make them (TDs) redraft it so it is. No more junkets in Brussels , let them use video-conferencing.
This will take 10 years to impliment! Keep up the good work Ming!!!

Submitted by mad nEd o'hamilli @ 12:19 am, 4th Mar '11
,yes Luke,
note they used turf spades .just imagine instead of growing all that canibas by hand
you used machinery sure yid have more weed than ye could 'draw'. so with the turf
use the big mochines t cut the bog and yive no option but t flog it , cause begad yid never burn it all yersilf. but sure lukit tis great t be on the bog ,i wish 'dem futters would tik home der wrappers, sure d place is destoyed with urea bags urika!

Submitted by david corcoran @ 5:11 pm, 10th Mar '11
luke ming flanagan for president. advisers,shane ross, richard boyd barrett, pearse doherty, mick wallace, claire daly ,joe higgins and a few more like minded t.d.s these people would run the country perfectly . sack the rest of the wasters and jail all the fianna fail criminals,every one of them. long llive the king, luke ming flanagan the first. this is not a joke.

Submitted by David @ 2:25 pm, 5th May '11
I don't really understand this stance on turf-cutting. I understand that plenty of people owe their livelihoods to the industry, but at this point, economic reliance on fossil fuels is very much a mistake - not only because supplies are quickly diminishing, but because turf cutting does cause damage to the land, its ecosystem and the planet's environment as a whole.

For this very reason, I have a huge objection to the use of the quotation by Father O'Flanagan; turf was not put there by a deity for use by humans, it is the natural product of millions of years of decomposition. While we may use it in vast quantities for our own convenience, we have not been granted some kind of divine licence to do so. This kind of thinking is both unreasonable and dangerous as it helps to proliferate the belief that we don't need to protect the environment because a god says it's fine.

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