Unused Portlaoise cutaway bogs 'greatest gem we have' for visitors

Bord na Móna is being urged to meet a Portlaoise group of residents who have bright ideas on how to repurpose old train tracks on its vast disused bogs stretching across into south Laois.

Portlaoise councillors met the group and are urging the semi-state body to listen to what they suggest for the nearly 7,500 acres of bogs it owns in Portlaoise and Laois, and the intact bog railway lines.

Fianna Fáil Cllr Catherine Fitzgerald is Cathaoirleach of Portlaoise Municipal District.

"Can we write to Bord na Móna again? People in the district have asked us again, we had no response to our first request.

"The group have really ambitious plans, I appeal to Bord na Móna to meet councillors and the group. The opportunities are amazing. There's so much of our history and heritage in the bog. Every young lad in Portlaoise worked there every summer. Local people want to drive this on and we support them," she said.

Cllr Willie Aird agrees.

"This is as big if not bigger than the Slieve Bloom bike tracks. It is the greatest gem we have. I saw millions of tonnes of peat taken off. What's left is something we will not get anywhere else.

"You can go to Cashel Bog, park and walk across bogs, under rail bridges the whole way back to Togher, and to Ross bog on the Ballyfin road. We have people driving to Waterford to cycle the greenway. The track is there. It has huge potential," he said.

"When you put the three together, it's one of the biggest bogs in Ireland," Cllr Fitzgerald said.

It is three months since she tabled a motion calling on the Laois County Council to contact Bord na Móna to retain all the existing narrow gauge railway track associated with the Portlaoise Cúl na Mona works and turn them into a greenway.

Bord na Móna is considering uses for the Laois bogs it is no longer permitted to harvest, including renewable wind or solar energy generation.