An offer of £1,000 an acre and £100 per mile relocation money will be rejected formally at a meeting today in Dublin between turf-cutters and the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands.
This week representatives of the 3,000 or so farmers and others who take turf from bogs - which are being designated as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) under EU regulations - met in Tullamore to consider the offer. The meeting was organised by the Irish Farmers' Association.
The Department wants the turf-cutters to leave the 8,000 hectares of raised bog so that it can be preserved for future generations. But that has brought conflict between turf-cutters and the Department.
Many of these bogs are located in the midlands, in Counties Offaly, Longford and Westmeath, and there was no doubting the opposition by the cutters to the proposals.
At a meeting late last year the cutters were offered £1,000 per acre for their cutting rights. They were also offered alternative bog workings, for which they would receive £100 per mile relocation money in a one-off payment.
Today they will be travelling to Dublin to tell Department officials that not only do they reject the offer but they will proceed with turf-cutting this year.
The Department, which must designate the areas this year under an EU directive, had wanted the deal concluded before the turf-cutting begins in early spring.
The new designation affects 31 bogs in the Republic. But nowhere is opposition to the change more deeply felt than in Clara, Co Offaly, where 120 families take their turf under agreements with Bord na Mona.
They say that if they keep to their current agreements with the board they will be leaving 90 per cent of the bog intact and they should be allowed to keep cutting.
Some cutters claim they can generate up to £50,000 from an acre of bog over the years and that an offer of £1,000 is totally unacceptable.
They point out that for a private individual, changing from turf as a fuel may involve buying new heating systems for their homes. It could also cost them a great deal of money to develop road networks in new bog workings so that they could exploit the turf.
Because of the new regulations, they say, the bog banks they would be offered would not be up to the quality of the bogs they are being forced to leave.
They have also rejected an offer of a supply of turf to replace what they used to cut themselves.