Bog owners in twelve-hour stand-off with Gardaí as turf row hits new low

Date Published: 20-Jun-2012

A file has been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) following a twelve-hour showdown at a County Galway bog in which a group of 100 local people used cover of darkness to take back two turf-cutting machines which had been seized from them by Gardai on Tuesday.

But Gardai have been accused of an ‘over the top’ reaction after an airplane, the Crime Scene Unit, the Armed Response Unit, a jeep, and two patrol cars were deployed to Clonmoylan Bog, near Portumna, which is one of 53 bogs nationwide which have been designated as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs).

The stand-off at Clonmoylan was the most serious escalation so far in the on-going nationwide dispute between bog owners and the State authorities who banned turf-cutting at the 53 designated bogs, following European Union directives, from the start of this year.

National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) rangers called the Gardai to the scene after watching what they described as “illegal turf-cutting” from a hillside two miles away with binoculars. The NPWS staff have not engaged with turf-cutters at the three designated bogs in South East Galway since last October.

Turf-cutting had been suspended at Clonmoylan for the past couple of weeks due to weather conditions, but a plane hired by the NPWS flew over the bog after two machines began operating on Tuesday morning.

Within less than an hour, the NPWS had called Gardai to the scene at 11.30am. A stand-off ensued throughout the day, as the machine-operators were reluctant to resume cutting while the Gardai maintained a presence at the bog.

Eventually, at about 8pm, Gardai announced that they were “seizing” the turf-cutting machines to prevent illegal cutting from taking place. By this stage an angry crowd of about 100 people had gathered and some locals set up ‘road-blocks’ at either end of a small secondary road to prevent the Gardai from leaving the scene.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.