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The Rossport Five

The Rossport Five are honourable men, full of integrity. Shell, the Government and Mayo County Council also have honourable people working within their ranks. Now is the time for their voices to be heard. Justice and the law demand it.

The Mayo News

Mark Waters marked time at 8:25 am on June 30th, 2005 6 comments .

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6 Responses to “The Rossport Five”

Kathy Ryder : July 3rd, 2005 at 10:45 pm
I think what Shell and the Irish Government aredoing in North Mayo, is absolutely outragious. If this sort of policy was happening in foreign dictatorships, the Government would be adding their voice, or at least pretending to, protestations about such an outrage.
Are they even more stupid than we think, did they think that we have only plebs in Mayo who won’t know when their lives and property are being put in horrendous danger?
I know God made stupid people but why did he have to put them all in the Dail?
kathleen mcgreal : July 6th, 2005 at 12:13 am
I applaud the Rossport Five for their courage in standing up to the tyranny of multinationals who, like the colonists before them, will carve up Ireland for their own use. Shell has been dishonest in its dealings with the people of Rossport whose fragile environment will be destroyed by this gas line. Even worse are the potential health risks and safety issues this project will cause. I may be biased but few places can rival Rossport for its natural beauty, and to see it destroyed and do nothing would be criminal.
Treasa : July 6th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
At the risk of making myself terribly unpopular:

Kathy: please read this link and tell me if you seriously can compare events in North Mayo to events in the Niger Delta; I’m afraid I cannot.

What is happening in North Mayo is on a very small scale: for example this report reveals that up to 700 houses may have to be demolished for a new Heathrow runway – while I admit to not having read every single news report on the subject of this gasline, I don’t recall reading that any houses are going to have to be demolished.

Also this from Wales in the 1960s flooding of villages to provide Liverpool with water (other villages flooded for the benefit of Birmingham – this not a unique case either)

Additionally on the subject of CPOs in the US, this report on a recent Supreme Court ruling is illuminative – forced purchase of propertie to enable development which would increase the tax take (this the primary justification of “greater good”)

I cite these examples to make it clear that to a very great extent, issues affecting Rossport are neither unique nor new. They all centre on arguments of 1) greater good 2) trampling over local people for an indefinable greater good 3) environmental issues and destruction of a fragile environment. The example of Nigeria is to try and put things into some sort of perspective.

I have a lot of concerns about this matter but chief amongst them is that the debate has become so polarised and emotive that rational discussion is now almost impossible.

Most of the discussion is centering on the pipeline. But without exploitation of the gas fields, the pipeline will be a moot issue. So my first question would be, on balance, are people in Mayo for or against the exploitation of the Corrib gasfields?

I also have seen comments and views to the effect of it would be just as easy – albeit a little more expensive – for Shell (or potentially whoever…) to carry out gas refinery processes on the platforms rather than piping them to an onshore facility. I may have missed something here but if that were to be the case, the next point would be moving the gas from the platforms – I have seen absolutely no suggestions from any of those opposed to this pipeline as to what would happen were Shell to decide to carry out refinery tasks off shore and then still wish to pipe the gas ashore. As far as I am aware, gas from the Kinsale field is brought ashore by pipeline (24inch according to this) so the issue of piping the gas will have to be dealt with at some stage anyway. What would be the position on that?

Mark – thanks for the link to the Mayo News site, I’ve also found some reports in the Western People to be very informative.
Mark Waters : July 7th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
Treasa,

Yes, it is important to put this in perspective. This case should be judged on its own merits.

As regards your specific questions, from what I understand, the vast majority of people in Mayo (including those in jail) are for the exploitation of the Corrib gasfields. The contentious issue relates to safety. People would prefer that the gas is refined at sea because the refined gas that was piped ashore would be safer. For a start it would be pumped at a lower pressure and would have an odour to allow for detection of leaks (unrefined gas is colourless and odourless). When you discuss the Kinsale pipeline you are not comparing like with like. The protesters would be quite happy with a pipeline similiar to Kinsale.

Apart from the nitty gritty of what is the best way to bring the gas ashore there are two points that particularly concern me about this case:

1. Relating to the ‘greater good’ argument that you mention, the current deal between Shell and the state offers no benefit to the Irish people as the state receives no royalties for the gas and will receive very little tax revenue due to the generous tax breaks that Shell have received (a scheme put in place by Ray Burke apparently). Indeed it is quite possible that much of the gas will be exported to the UK. We know for a fact that none of it will remain in Mayo (despite Frank Fahy’s assurances when the deal was first announced).

2. The jailed men have raised legitimate concerns about health and safety which have not yet been satisfactorily addressed. At the time of their jailing the 2nd (and now seemingly also compromised) Health Assessment had not been released to the public. Public hearings relating to health and safety issues are not due to begin until October. Yet the men are sent to jail and Shell are allowed to proceed apace with developing the pipeline (with the help of the blind eye turned by Mayo CoCo). This is anti-democratic and should be a concern even if one does not agree with the stance taken by the men.

PS: My spam filter is blocking you because it moderates any post with lots of links. It’s nothing personal .
Treasa : July 8th, 2005 at 10:08 am
Mark,

Obviously I didn’t make myself quite clear enough here. The points I wished to raise were in response to your two previous posters, one of whom implied that if what was happening in North Mayo was happening in any other part of the world, particularly in dictatorships, the government would, at the very least, be paying lipservice to protests. I wished to point out that this happens all over the world, has for years and the fact that some people in north Mayo, to some great extent, are having their lives and wishes trampled over is not unique. That does not, however, justify injustice.

As regards the pipeline and the method of bring gas ashore from the Kinsale fields – this was not in response to the health and safety issues. I never brought them up. Your second poster highlighted the destruction of the environment around Rossport – not the health and safety issues. If a pipeline of any description has to be built into the area, be it to carry unrefined or refined gas, it is going to have that impact.

As regards the health and safety aspects – I’m unwilling to enter a debate on this because I absolutely do not know enough about it and would assume that people on the ground are more in tune with the reality of the situation than I could be.

As for the greater good argument – I have very strong feelings about this. There was a letter in the Indo at some point during the week from someone railing that “five men shouldn’t be allowed to hold up gas supplies for the country” or words along those lines. Arguments of that nature make me slightly weary because they’re generally made by people who will never be affected by such decisions. Another example is that strata of society who constantly rail against unions, from the safety of being in a position of being least affected or never affected by management decisions which destroy people’s livelihoods.

I’m not sitting here saying that for the greater good, anyone’s livelihood, land or health must be trampled over. I provided two links that I hoped implied that the greater good argument was somewhat movable (Wales/and particularly the Slate article). Quite a lot of people in Wales didn’t see much of the greater good in having some of their valleys flooded by English city councils to provide water. I see it as a slightly simplistic tool that often allows some people to sit on their own high moral ground, safe from the adverse affects of their decision or point of view.

For what it’s worth, and slightly off topic – the real greater good would be far better served by increasing effort into renewable energy sources because definitely in the medium to long term we’re going to need them. I work in an industry that is going to be hopelessly compromised by the lack of oil as it happens, and wanton waste is not something I particularly appreciate. If we were in a position to start extract the gas from the Corrib fields within 24 hours, it’s still not going to negate the need to reassess energy sources.

Disputes of this nature are never simple – I see this one as having been emotionalised by some (quite a lot of?) of the media reporting, and that, I think, is counterproductive. Personally, I would be going along the lines that in the short term (say the next five-twenty years), we’re going to have to look at extracting the gas somehow, but the modalities of how that is to be done needs to be the subject of very careful consideration. Above all else, we need to recognise that the cost of generating power is going to increase and alternative methods of doing it will have to sought rather sooner than later.

Regarding gas exports: we currently import something like 82% of our gas needs – I came across this figure during some searches the other day, but I don’t still have the link, sorry. To export our own gas borders on insanity.

Finally – please don’t worry – I wasn’t taking it personally that you apparently needed to moderate seemingly every comment I made to your blog. Hysterical paranoia is not one of my current personality traits. I’ll try not to overload with supporting documentation the next time though.
tony o'malley : July 24th, 2005 at 4:36 pm
Last week on holiday I drove past the picket near Belmullet and then enquired what was going on.
I cannot believe the Irish Gov has allowed this massive injustice to develope and now we have the Five pitted against the High Court.
There can be no winner in this. They wil not give in and the High Court certainly will not.
This is Government incompetence on a massive scale and I simply cannot understand why the Irish media are not crucifying Aherne over it.

The Rossport Five

6 Responses to “The Rossport Five”

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