Rossport Solidarity Group Take Action at Van Oord’s UK Offices

An account of todays (16/06/2009) action against Van Oord UK, own­ers of the dredgers oper­at­ing in Broad­haven Bay, and in Sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Erris in their 10 year strug­gle.

ROSSPORT SOLIDARITY GROUP TAKE ACTION AT VAN OORD’S UK OFFICES

Today (16/06/2009) at 2.30pm a group of ten activists arrived at the UK offices of Van Oord, in New­bury, Berk­shire. Van Oord own the dredg­ing ves­sels oper­at­ing in Broad­haven Bay, as part of the Cor­rib Gas Project.

Our inten­tion was to occu­py the offices and to deliv­er a let­ter to and speak with the UK head of oper­a­tions, explain­ing our sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Erris and our objec­tions to Van Oord’s involve­ment in the project and demand­ing that they stop their oper­a­tions there imme­di­ate­ly.

We were met out­side by police; a local woman told us that they had been there, out­side Van Oord’s offices since 11am, with rein­force­ments arriv­ing at 2pm; at least half an hour before we arrived in the area. It was obvi­ous from the actions of the Police Offi­cers in ques­tion that they knew we were com­ing and had briefed Van Oord.

They refused to let us on to the fore­court and carpark, but were will­ing, how­ev­er, for us to stand and sit on the wall and pave­ment out­side.

We unfurled our ban­ners and demand­ed to speak to high­est rank­ing man­ag­er on the premis­es.

One of our group was allowed to approach the offices and even­tu­al­ly some­one claim­ing to be Van Oord’s UK Man­ag­er in charge of Irish oper­a­tions emerged to speak to her.

A let­ter and port­fo­lio of pho­tographs was then deliv­ered to him out­lin­ing the his­to­ry of the Cor­rib Gas Project, the oppo­si­tion of local res­i­dents, and includ­ing our demands.

Press releas­es were sent, a local paper inter­viewed some of the group, and at 4.pm we left peace­ful­ly.
Part of the let­ter deliv­ered to Van Oord UK

For the atten­tion of Van Oord direc­tors:

We are here today to demand that Van Oord stop all work on the Cor­rib Gas project imme­di­ate­ly. We have come in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port in Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land.

Van Oord are cur­rent­ly car­ry­ing out dredg­ing works in Broad­haven Bay, Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion (SAC), in prepa­ra­tion for the lay­ing of the off-shore sec­tion of the gas pipeline.

The devel­op­ment has no con­sent from the local com­mu­ni­ty and the neg­a­tive impacts the project has made on their lives and envi­ron­ment are already huge.

In the last few months the sit­u­a­tion in the Ross­port area has become increas­ing­ly seri­ous. There have been sev­er­al major attacks on promi­nent cam­paign­ers against the project; these are almost cer­tain­ly linked to the secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny con­tract­ed by Shell, IRMS.

Van Oord state that “Safe­ty is a key indi­ca­tor of our suc­cess”. Recent events in Mayo demon­strate a com­plete dis­re­gard for safe work­ing prac­tise.

Van Oord must end its oper­a­tion in Mayo imme­di­ate­ly.