Firefighters tackled 23,596 forest, bog, gorse and grass fires in the eight-year period between 2011 and 2018.

Analysis of figures from the Department of Housing by the Irish Farmers Journal shows that there are over 1,500 of these fires each year. The year 2011 was the worst for these types of fires, with 3,889 fires.

Unsurprisingly, the counties which had the most fires in the period were counties with upland areas. Cork, Galway, Dublin, Wicklow, Kerry and Louth had high incidences of fire.

Some 4,029 forest, bog and gorse fires were reported in Cork, 1,731 in Galway and 1,662 in Dublin.

These types of fires peaked in 2018, when 4,810 fires were tackled by the fire service and thousands of acres were burned. This would coincide with the drought the country experienced in 2018.

At the time of writing, data for 2019 was not available.

Illegal burning

Various county councils around the country have appealed to landowners to cease and desist all controlled burning immediately. Over the last two weeks, firefighters in many parts of the country have been putting out gorse fires.

Two weeks ago, 150ac of land in Killarney National Park was burned, with three units of firefighters spending four hours fighting the blaze.

It is illegal to burn land between 1 March and 31 August and penalties can be imposed against landowners found to be illegally burning.