His Carlow-Kilkenny constituency is not an area where turf is cut and sold, though some natives would buy it in from Laois. Nonetheless, the tentative plans to ban the commercial sale of turf, along with other smoky fuels, was, Phelan claimed, drawing considerable backlash from those he met at an event attended by several thousand people. 

Brian Leddin, a Green Party TD based in Limerick city, spent his childhood down on the bog in Co Kerry initially watching the farmers cut turf by hand and use a pony and cart to transport it, before later observing it become a far more mechanised operation in the late 1990s.

Phelan despises Fine Gael being in Government with the Greens, while Leddin is on the radical wing of his own party. Though both are on opposite sides of the turf war, neither were particularly vocal last week as Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil backbenchers took to the airwaves to lambast Eamon Ryan’s plans.

But their own personal experiences are indicative of the unique position turf occupies in the Irish way of life, and how totemic the issue of clamping down on its sale has now become. It could be a portent of what may lie ahead as this Government pursues the most radical decarbonising agenda in the history of the State.

The Green Party maintains that Ryan, the Environment and Transport Minister, is pushing ahead with plans to ban the sale of commercial smoky fuels including smoky coal, turf and wet wood.

Small rural communities of under 500 people will be exempt from any ban on selling and gifting of turf to neighbours and friends under regulations that are still being drafted, but are intended to come into effect from September 1.

That would appear at odds with what Taoiseach Micheál Martin told the Dáil on Wednesday: “There is no ban on the use of turf in rural Ireland and there will be no ban for the remainder of the year.” Fianna Fáil backbenchers interpreted those remarks as the row being defused and the issue being kicked to touch for the time being.

“On yer bike Eamon,” texted one TD.

But Laois-Offaly deputy and Fianna Fáil big beast Barry Cowen is adamant that when any regulations are finalised, the population limit will have to go. He points to census data showing that 1,325 local authority homes in Offaly burn solid fuel, the majority of them turf, in towns and villages with populations over 500. Numerous Fine Gael TDs have publicly and privately said the 500 limit is unworkable.

“Eamon Ryan knows the depth of feeling and concern and the depth of disagreement and rejection that there was for his proposals, and he knows he can’t bring it into the Dáil without having squared away the two parties,” Cowen said.

He argues that cutting and burning turf is a “diminishing practice” and as if to emphasise this, Cowen said the 200 local authority houses in his area built since 2018 don’t have solid-fuel systems. Another 150 are being retrofitted as part of the just transition, he added.

Cowen’s approach, which most in government see as constructive on this issue, stands in sharp contrast to that of some in Fine Gael, whose leader Leo Varadkar’s announcement last month that the proposed ban was being paused sparked much of the current Coalition angst.

Ryan subsequently insisted there was no pause and then revealed his plan to solve the row — including the controversial 500-person population limit — in the Irish Independent last Monday.

With the Tánaiste in California this week on government business, Fine Gael backbenchers — unhappy over Ryan’s fresh proposals and about the fact they had to read them in the paper — eviscerated the Green Party leader at an ill-tempered meeting on Tuesday.

Former rural affairs minister and Mayo TD Michael Ring led the charge, accusing Ryan of being “great for bluff” and describing the population limit as a “daft idea”, which he blamed on the civil service. Civil servants, he added, were “running this country to the ground”.

Ring asked Ryan why he had a right to take away the livelihoods of people who cut turf, and repeatedly asked the Green Party leader if he reads the answers to parliamentary questions (PQs) that are sent out — a reference to the current controversy being sparked by a PQ answer from Ryan’s department to Brendan Griffin, the Kerry-based Fine Gael TD earlier this month. 

For his part Griffin, the deputy government whip, told the meeting that what Ryan was proposing was “unworkable completely — it’s bananas stuff altogether”. He is said to have warned Ryan that his insistence on pushing ahead with it was “threatening the stability of the Government”.

Speaking to the Sunday Independent this weekend, Mr Griffin said: “I won’t be happy until we see the final proposals being enough to allay concerns of people in rural Ireland.”

During the meeting, Ring — whose volume levels are legendary in Fine Gael — loudly interrupted Ryan as he responded. Joe Carey also heckled, asking Ryan if he’d ever “saved” turf. Carey told this newspaper that Ryan’s proposals were “a step too far”.

Even the official readout from the meeting on both Fine Gael and the Green side described it as “robust”.

The Greens are adamant that this is solely a matter of improving air quality and enhancing public health. Leddin, who chairs the Oireachtas Climate Committee, said “public health has to be the primary motivation” and added “it’s something we’ll look back at in time as the right decision”. 

The Greens also point to a study by the Irish Thoracic Society in 2018 on the respiratory health of the nation. It shows that death rates from chronic lower respiratory disease among all ages from 2012 to 2016 were highest in the Midlands — the historic home of the peat industry and where many households continue to cut and burn turf.

Conversely Sinn Féin, which last week unsuccessfully pushed a Dáil motion calling on the Government to scrap its plans, argues that fuel poverty is responsible for 2,800 deaths in Ireland every year.

That figure was loudly proclaimed by finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty in the Dáil on Thursday.

“There are 2,800 people in this State who die of fuel poverty each year, each year, each year!” he shouted across the chamber at Ryan, who asked in response: “What number of deaths should we tolerate?”

But the source of this figure appears to be a 2007 report from the Institute of Public Health in Ireland. The 15-year-old report quotes data on excess winter mortality as a percentage increase over non-winter deaths from the period 1988 to 1997 — in other words data from 25 years ago.

What’s more, the report says the 2,800 figure is for the whole island — and not this State alone, as Doherty claimed.

Sinn Féin did not respond to questions about the source of the figure or the discrepancy in Doherty’s remarks.

The party’s strident opposition to the government plan is all the more interesting, given their health spokesperson David Cullinane vociferously argued as recently as December 2019 for a nationwide ban on smoky coal. Back then he said there was “no reason, and the minister has given no good reason to the House and the public, for not proceeding with a nationwide ban.”

Ryan has pointed out that a ban on smoky coal alone is not possible, as it would lead to legal action from coal distributors who would argue the State should also prohibit other solid fuels, including wood and peat products which have a similar emissions profile.

This is why, as Ryan’s allies argue, the primary intention of the draft solid fuel regulations is to focus on the large-scale and commercial sale of smoky fuels — particularly smoky coal, but peat and wood have to be included. They argue that the last three environment ministers backed down in the face of these legal threats.

In confronting the issue now, Ryan is encountering not a legal threat but resistance from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Some believe it has even damaged the stability of the Government. That is unlikely to be helped by the more robust approach adopted privately by some Greens this weekend.

“It was a bit of a shock to see the party of Garret FitzGerald take such a populist line, where they seemed to be trying to outdo Mattie McGrath and the Healy-Raes,” said a Green Party source.

“The party talks a great talk when it comes to the environment, but it was a bit of an eye-opener to see their response when it came to tackling air pollution.”

Another Green Party source within government said: “There is a rump of four to five in Fine Gael and three or four in Fianna Fáil who are determined to out Healy-Rae the Healy-Raes — and if they are let away with it consistently, especially on climate stuff and public transport and all that, then you’re going to have problems.”

That said, calmer heads are likely to prevail in this turf war. A resolution will be found eventually and the Government will not fall over turf but there are many other battles on climate action to come.