There is evidence that the harvesting and use of peat for fuel in Ireland has been going on for over a thousand years. 
Indeed, it is estimated that more than 16% of the island was originally bogland, which, in addition to turf, or peat, produces a habitat for a unique array of plants and animals. This includes Asphodel, Heathers, Deer Sedge, Purple Moor Grass,
(close up taken from the side of the road after I stumbled into the Midland bogs commercial harvesting area)
Cranberry 
and an interesting little carnivorous plant, the Sundew, 
which eats on the average, five insects per month.
Animal life includes the Irish Hare, 
Dragon Flies, Spiders, Lizards, Bog Otters, 
Frogs, and many varieties of Beetles and Moths.
I became interested in this and decided to educate myself when I found myself accidentally in the heartland of the midland bogs after taking back roads following a sunrise visit to Clonmacnoise in County Offaly and came upon this:
East side of the lane, commercial turf harvesting
(this photo, taken off the web captures the scope better than my humble pictures).
It felt like a wound in the earth, open and aching
Yet, simply looking across the road to the West side of the lane in its natural state, before harvesting (or, possibly after some reconstruction), yielded this:
A few miles further down the road, I came upon an area with a sign offering “peat plots for hire”. Here, people are harvesting turf in the more traditional manner, albeit at a much greedier scale 
In “olden times”, it was common for families and individuals, even communities working together, to hand cut, turn, stack, dry and then carry their turf home for fuel. 
Hard work leading to a romanticized image of the rural Irish peasant
When the water content dries out of turf, what remains are very burnable, plant based, logs.
Sisters performing a critical service
Carrying the harvest home the “auld” way
The boglands existed in the public mind as a sort of symbol of poverty and barrenness. So, as early as the late 17th century, the government began to implement various schemes to reclaim the land: draining the water from it to make it more compatible to agriculture, then selling off the fertile acreage to monied agari-enterprises.
There are two main types of bog in Ireland: blanket bog, which is found in the uplands and throughout Western Ireland, where the rainfall is the highest 
and raised bogs, which are formed out of lake basins and are found throughout the midland counties 
in this image we can see just how deep the layers can be on a raised bog
Boglands are critical to the island’s biodiversity and they help alleviate the effects of climate change by locking away the carbon. In fact, bogland is a sort of proto-coal; always wet, it remains turf–if entirely dried out, the turf would turn into coal. However, this process takes thousands, possibly millions of years, and given Ireland’s bounteous rainfall, it has never happened.
It helps to think of bogland a a kind of giant sponge: it stores water and prevents flooding during heavy rains, then due to its high carbon content, it purifies the water which seeps through it and back into the water table. This is a very good thing.
But the survival of boglands, and with it, Ireland’s climate health, is in serious trouble. 
Commercial harvesting of the blanket bogs has increased to an unsustainable level since the 1930’s, when the Irish Free Government formed what was originally known as the Turf Development Board. It later became Bord na Móna, the entity which now oversees marketing and “management” of the fragile boglands.
Presently, in addition to the mass selling of peat to the population for home heating purposes, there are several turf-fired electricity stations consuming over 3.8 million tonnes of milled peat supplied by Bord na Móna per year as part of the Irish energy plan. 
One of many of the peat fired electrical plants being subsidized across the island
It has been estimated by the Peatland Conservation Council that viable bogland had been reduced to just 6% since the advent of these giant truck harvesting schemes. 
midland bog being raped for profit
In many of the central boglands, there are even train tracks and transport systems in place across the midland bogs to facilitate swifter transport of the highly valuable peat.
Born na Mona approved
This should be of concern to everyone because Peat is the most expensive, as well as one of the least effective, fossil fuels out there. It adds twice as much greenhouse gas and CO2 to the atmosphere as natural gas. It costs more to produce electricity using peat than it yields in revenues.
In fact, the Bord na Mona has been subsidizing the production of electricity through peat fueled power plants to the tune of over 45 million Euro per year! This, just to break even. Imagine how many sustainable and environmentally friendly jobs could be created with that sum of money.
Given the politics involved and the pockets being lined, it will take the creation of an aggressive and creative social marketing strategy to inform Ireland’s citizens and change their fuel consumption practices if the bog lands are to be saved. 
natural bogland, thanks to an organized conservation project