Chair of the Oireachtas Agriculture Committee Deputy Jackie Cahill has raised the issue of rewetting with Minister Charlie McConalogue in the Dáil.
The Thurles TD says the rewetting and rewilding proposals from the EU have led to huge anxiety among rural people.
It entails saturating peatland to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Deputy Cahill says the current plans are not acceptable.
“Farmers and rural people have worked extremely hard and spent an awful lot of money in making land productive and the view is out there that this land they would be forced to rewet it and let it back into a wild state.
“A lot of clarity needs to be brought to what the proposals are but I think the proposals need to be modified and the targets that were initially proposed by the Commission about the amount of land that they wanted restored and rewetted also in my opinion have to readjusted.”
The Thurles Fianna Fáil TD says even having adjacent land designated is a cause for concern.
“At the moment if you have designated land it’s probably worth 20% of the value of undesignated land nearby. You know when farmers hear about rewetting a shiver goes up their spine because they’re extremely worried that if someone in their locality decides to rewet the impact it will have on their land that they want to keep in arable production.”
