Thomas Murtagh (b. 1929) Part 1

Thomas Murtagh grew up in Longford and at an early age he began work with the fuel importers, weighing in lorries of turf and coal at the Phoenix Park during the Emergency Period. He later got a job with Bord na Móna and was appointed as a Wage Clerk at Timahoe in 1951 when the workforce totalled 1,850 people. All the men were doing piecework and he recalls the supervisors who would keep an account of the scale of the work. The local people would bring their loads of turf to Dublin, as they worked independently of Bord na Móna. Thomas Murtagh discusses the management and staff at Timahoe. In 1961 he was promoted to Costing Standards at Ballivor where he spent four years and then he was assigned to Boora where 1,000 tonnes of peat were cut each day. In 1972 he began his days at Turraun Bog.