Ireland Is Being Taken to Court Over Peat. Your Compost Is Still Legal
The European Commission referred Ireland to the Court of Justice in June. An Oireachtas committee took evidence in July. There is no retail ban — but a country made of bog now imports its peat.
Boggy moorland. Photo: Gunnar Ridderström / Unsplash.
On 4 June, the European Commission referred Ireland to the Court of Justice of the European Union over peat extraction. Three weeks later an Oireachtas committee sat down with the horticulture industry to work out what happens to the compost.
If you garden in Ireland, here is the thing to understand first: there is no ban on peat compost in Irish shops. The crisis is upstream, in the bogs, not at the till.
THE THRESHOLDS
When peat extraction needs permission
UNDER 10 ha
Exempt
Exempted development. No planning permission required.
10–29 ha
Permission
Planning permission required.
30–49 ha
Plus EIA
Planning permission and a mandatory Environmental Impact Assessment.
50 ha +
Plus licence
Planning, EIA and an EPA licence.
Source: the framework set out in the Government’s January 2022 guidance on peat extraction.
What actually happened in June
The Commission’s referral concerns Ireland’s failure to comply with the Environmental Impact Assessment directive in relation to peat extraction — specifically, enforcement against significant ongoing cutting. It was carried on the same day by RTÉ, The Irish Times, the Law Society Gazette, the Irish Farmers Journal and TheJournal.
On 24 June the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food took evidence on horticultural peat from Growing Media Ireland, Klasmann-Deilmann Ireland, the Irish Farmers Association and the Irish Hardy Nursery Stock Association, with the EPA appearing separately. The committee’s stated focus was stock levels, extraction sites, and balancing the sector’s immediate needs against long-term environmental commitments.
“Operators engaged in large-scale unauthorised peat harvesting activities are in flagrant violation of environmental law.”
Environmental Protection Agency
The EPA has issued 38 notices under Section 63(1) to seven local authorities and seven proposed directions under Section 63(5), and has been investigating large-scale illegal extraction across seven counties, with court proceedings resulting in cessation at multiple sites.
Why this reaches your garden centre
Because Irish horticulture runs on peat, and the numbers are not small.
THE DEPENDENCE
From the Government’s 2022 working paper
OF SECTOR OUTPUT
~60%
Of the horticulture sector’s €469m output depends on peat as a growing medium.
JOBS
17,600+
Across primary production and downstream business.
ANNUAL NEED
131,000 m³
For amenity, soft fruit and vegetable growing. Mushrooms need a further 112,632 m³.
RESEARCH
€1.69m
Committed to Teagasc for peat-alternative research.
Source: Government working paper on peat supply in the horticulture sector, January 2022. These figures are four years old.
The reversal nobody announced
In the period to September 2021, Ireland imported 42,818 tonnes of peat and exported 500,253 — over 65 per cent of it to Great Britain, much of it into the hobby market.
That relationship has inverted. Domestic commercial extraction has been squeezed by planning and licensing enforcement, and Ireland — a country substantially made of bog — now imports the peat its growers use. That is the story, and it happened without a single announcement.
What is not true
Two things circulate that we are not going to repeat.
Ireland does not have peat-free gardening rules. Per the Irish Peatland Conservation Council, there is no ban on retail peat compost sales here. A working group chairman’s report recommended eliminating peat use in the retail sector by 2025; the IPCC’s position is that they had yet to hear any talk from Government of peat being removed from the shelves. England has pursued a retail ban. Ireland has not.
And we have no current figure for what peat compost costs in an Irish garden centre in 2026, or for current import volumes, so we are not going to tell you prices are rising. If you want that number, it needs to come from Growing Media Ireland or a named buyer, not from an article.
What is being built instead
Teagasc’s Beyond Peat project, funded by the Department of Agriculture, is assessing alternative growing and casing materials across five sub-sectors — ornamentals, hardy nursery stock, fruit, vegetables and mushrooms — including life cycle assessments of the alternatives proposed.
Which is the honest answer to what a gardener should do. The compost on the shelf is legal. The bog it came from may not be. And the replacement is still being invented.
HOW THIS PIECE WAS SOURCED
The CJEU referral of 4 June 2026 is reported by The Irish Times and the Law Society Gazette. The Oireachtas committee session of 24 June is via Agriland. Extraction thresholds are from the Government’s Regulatory Framework Applying to Peat Extraction (January 2022) and the sector figures from the accompanying working paper — both four years old and dated as such here. EPA enforcement figures and quotation are from epa.ie. The retail position is from the Irish Peatland Conservation Council. Beyond Peat is from teagasc.ie.
RTÉ’s business coverage of the committee session was not readable to us directly, so we have not quoted it. We have not published any 2026 figure for peat imports or compost prices, because we could not source one.
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