Rural development is about using what they term "own resources" to the best possible advantage. Perhaps there is no better example of this than in a new development in the Slieve Bloom mountains.
Work is progressing well on establishing what is thought to be Ireland's only modern peat bathhouse in Kinnitty, Co Offaly, in the heart of the Slieve Blooms.
The development is the idea of Ita Wrafter, one of the midlands' best-known herbalists, who runs a thriving business using peat packs to ease pains and aches.
Ita, a native of Tullamore, has been involved in alternative medicine for more than 10 years and the peat bath-house is merely an extension of what she has been doing already.
"There are a number of peat bath-houses on the Continent, especially in Germany, and I have seen how they operate and we can have the same facility here," she said.
"My idea is not new because from folklore we know that the warrior chieftains and their horses used to retreat into the bogs for healing after their battles. "The first written record of the use of peat in medicine in Irish history dates back to 1014, after a battle in the Slieve Bloom mountains," she said.
"That is where I hope to locate my peat baths and I have already carried out market research, with the aid of LEADER funding, to see if there is a market potential. I have found that there is."
She plans to have the baths ready within a year and she expects there will be a nationwide demand for them, and from tourists.
She said Germany makes great use of peat in medicine and medical insurance companies there offer attractive discounts for those who use them annually for detoxification and preventative treatment.
Peat baths are the mainstay in treating arthritic and rheumatic disorders in Germany and also in post-operative and post-trauma rehabilitation.
However, there is more to using peat than going out to your nearest bog and grabbing a handful and applying it to the afflicted region, according to Ita.
"The peat we use has to be over 8,000 years old because only then does it contain the proper mix of minerals and other healing substances which can cure," she said.
"I have to search for this material, normally where Bord na Mona are working, and I use it now for making up peat packs which can be applied to limbs and other parts of the body." She said the normal way to make a peat bath is to mix about 140 kg of natural, water-saturated peat with about 70 litres of water.
This mixture is heated to 39 to 42
Celsius and the patient stays in the bath for no more than 20 minutes.
After the bath, the peat is washed off and the patient is wrapped in a blanket to relax for at least 20 minutes.
In acute inflammation and rheumatological treatments, the peat is applied as a cold paste pack with a temperature of 2 to 15
Celsius. Currently, Ita is selling peat packs, which she makes up in her Kinnitty home with the help of out-workers who sew the packs for the operation.
"I sell directly to sports clubs and there is a heavy demand for them. I am convinced they work and the feedback from those who use them is very good," she said. The good news for her is that in central Europe where the treatment is much sought after, bog resources are becoming limited. Here, supplies are plentiful.