Shell to Sea : Struggle a microcosm of bad approach to development

mayo | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Friday September 07, 2007 14:22 by DSF

We are not going away — Ó Seighin

Micheál Ó Seighin wrote a long article for An Phoblacht this week. His continuing analyses of the controversial Shell scheme to install a polluting refinery fed by a high-pressure production pipeline in the previously peaceful and serene Mayo countryside have been an enormously useful resource for Republicans and others.

Here he takes stock of the current situation:

Micheál Ó Seighin at Bellanaboy

Last week, at the start of a radio interview, the interviewer asked me why we still resisted Shell’s plans for this area, as it is obvious that they and the Government intend to just bash away and ignore our protests. The question made me quite angry, which surprised even myself. Even after seven years of resistance it is hard to imagine that people in the media and elsewhere have not yet got the message; “WE are not going away.”

But even more surprising is the acceptance that although this project is more than likely wrong – the wrong place, inland, through and within a community, in the catchment of the water supply for the entire Erris area, through SACs and SPAs – we, the targets of this misbegotten concept, should just crawl quietly away so that the people of Norway and other folk more deserving than the mere Irish can count their Euros in peace.

How dare we point out that this pipeline is a production pipeline of enormous explosive potential with a great lack of historical data on which to base a safety plan. Do we think we’re important or some such?

We oppose the Corrib project now for the same reasons that we have always opposed it – it puts us at risk. Since the developers first came promising goodies and pie in the sky the same issues apply – it is a dangerous project. This is not to say that the pipeline engineers will try to make it unsafe, that the designers will plan poisonous emissions into the working of the refinery. Of course they won’t. But neither do they deliberately make any other refinery or pipeline dangerous but accidents happen – they are a normal event in this industry and sometimes people die. Materials fail. People make mistakes. Plants malfunction. People get careless. In Carlsbad in 2000, twelve members of one family died when a moderately pressured gas pipe exploded and it really was no one’s fault.

Every day since I and four others were jailed, there is a protest held at Ballinaboy. On the 14th of this month a protest is again being held at Ballinaboy to highlight the, to us, obvious fact, that the protest goes on.

Since last October the daily grind has got more difficult since the squads of police have been sent in to enable the Shell project. Initially, according to the Garda Review, the decision was made (by whom?) not to arrest anyone because it was not intended (by whom?) to make martyrs.

As the resistance had until then been active on Shell’s land only, the guards forced us onto the public road and put up barriers so that we could now be accused of public order offences and of offences under the Traffic Acts. Superintendent Gannon alleged in the same Garda Review that local people had up until then been putting up road-blocks. This was not the case. We presume he reported likewise to his bosses.

After baton charges and broken bones the arrests began and at the moment eleven people are facing jail – or maybe it is 13 by now?

Read more at http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/20585