‘I would sooner do time in Mountjoy’: A turf-cutter on his right to take fuel from the bog

Matt Corbett reckons the best thing about cutting turf is that you get to disappear into silence for the day.

From early April to June, locals driving the narrow Connemara road past Carna towards Cuilleen or Moyrus in Co Galway might have seen Corbett work the narrow seam with a sleán, the narrow, right-angled spade that used to be the common tool. He usually works alone now. Not only does he not bring a portable radio for company, he knocks the mobile phone off too.

“Total silence,” Corbett says exultantly, and he is a man who enjoys conversation.

“When I’m cutting away, I could compose a song. Making up songs in my own little mind. I’m like a crow with a sore throat. Do you know what, during the time of Covid when you’d come out here on a day like today, you wouldn’t hear a car and it’s a totally different world. Until you go out to the main road again and reality kicks in. You go home and turn on the news and there’s some major disaster or something.”

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...if they take this away from us, how do they expect us to heat our houses? It’s all right for Eamon Ryan and the likes of them up in Dáil Éireann, they have fine new mansions

—  Matt Corbett

The Connemara man has come here on a heavenly mid-September afternoon to give a quick demonstration of a tradition that is vanishing. His winter haul is already stacked in the big shed adjoining the house, which was built in 1972. Turf has been the family’s main source of fuel since then. They light the range at nine in the morning and the embers are going at eleven that night. The home has an open fire too.

Come back to the shed next June, he promises, and it will be stripped clean. He is, of course, aware, of the European Commission-led regulations to protect peatlands and the Government’s signal of intent. The ban on the sale of smoky fuels came into force last October, including turf. He hasn’t had any official communication from anyone about his turf cutting and this particular strip of bog does not come under the Special Area of Conservation.

“No. Nobody has been on to us. I’ll tell you, though. I would sooner do time in Castlerea or Mountjoy, because if they take this away from us, how do they expect us to heat our houses? It’s all right for Eamon Ryan and the likes of them up in Dáil Éireann, they have fine new mansions. Our house was built in 1972 and the quality – well, most of it is better than what is on the market today. But maybe the insulation was not the best. And if I was told no more turf: at the rate I’d burn turf, I’d say €2,000 wouldn’t keep the house in oil. Are they going to give me that every year? They are not. That is the common feeling around here.”

Corbett is fastidious and cheerful about his work. He’s hesitant to go so far as to say there’s a technique to turf cutting. But it’s easy to tell a good cutter from a poor one by the shape of the sod. He frowns on the Ulster habit of cutting under the peat. “The sod is neither round nor square,” he says in mock dismay. But the virtues remain the same. “You need patience. You need to be kind of fit. And I like tidiness.”

Replenishes itself

When Corbett removes the scraw – the dried, grassy surface seam – he is careful to place it on the lower level of bogland dug in previous summers. Slowly, it replenishes itself.

“I try to leave it flat, the way I got it. We are leaving the bog as it was, aren’t we really? The only thing is, we are going down a bit. But give that 50 years and it will blend in.”

The inevitable transition from old to new energy methods have become part of the conversation in Carna. A local group has been formed to object to the proposed wind farm to be located off the Sceirde Rocks. Later, from his front garden, Corbett points toward St MacDara’s Island close to where the turbines would stand.

There is still plenty of life in the earth for little animals and insects. I am against the machine cutting, to be honest. It takes too much, and it leaves the place very rough

—  Matt Corbett

“They are novelty, to be honest. On a day like today you would hardly see them out there. But if they save people on their electricity bills, then that’s a good thing. Plus, it might give a few local people a bit of employment,” he says.

He is well versed in the ecological importance of Ireland’s peat boglands, an argument that was for decades the preserve of unheard conservationists.

“Well, that’s not dry,” he says, pointing towards a patch of grassy land close to where we stand.

“It is dry, but it holds the moisture, and you often see frogs and little lizards here. I started at that bank about six years ago. And you would never think there was turf cut there six years ago. So, it is back to square one. The layering helps. It holds the water. There is still plenty of life in the earth for little animals and insects. I am against the machine cutting, to be honest. It takes too much, and it leaves the place very rough.”

Corbett points further down the rough road to a bank of trees. It was there he learned to foot turf with his own father, also Matt.

Two centuries

“This side of those trees. There would be eight donkey carts going up and down this road. They would all operate the same area. It was like Eyre Square,” he says, referring to the busy Galway city square.

It’s a quieter strip of bog road now. Corbett, his son and two others still use the sleán. But that’s it. It’s obvious to him that younger people and newer homes designed with newer heating systems will mean less reliance on turf. He argues that time will solve all the bureaucratic and ecological worries caused by people like himself. Corbetts have been cutting turf on peatland around Carna for the better part of two centuries. But he can’t see that going on for much longer.

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“And it is a way of life. I’d be sorry to see it go. Because two flights from Shannon to New York would do more damage to the ozone layer than the few sods we burn,” he says.

He has a thought for the Green Party’s Minister for the Environment and Climate.

“I tell you, if Eamon Ryan had a home here and was given a trailer of turf as a present and it saved him buying a couple of hundred euros worth of oil, it might change his thinking,” he says.

“What I can’t understand: look at any house on a nice calm morning and the smoke coming out the chimney. What damage is that doing?”