Category: Action Reports

24th July 2008
The fight goes on- be part of it.
This is an urgent call for sup­port to pro­tect the com­mu­ni­ty and envi­ron­ment of Ross­port in Mayo, Ire­land. Shell is now attempt­ing to con­struct the first 200m metres of the onshore sec­tion of the pipeline with­out any plan­ning per­mis­sion. 13 res­i­dents were arrest­ed on Tues­day and this morn­ing a 10ft fence was erect­ed and guard­ed by40 police & 70 secu­ri­ty.
Help is urgent­ly need­ed. Come if u can. Protest at Irish Embassy, Shell garages etc.

At 8am this morn­ing, over 40 police, who are now sta­tioned in the Shell com­pound, and 70 Shell spe­cial­ist secu­ri­ty forced the local com­mu­ni­ty away from Glen­gad beach. The crowd who had assem­bled to mon­i­tor the ille­gal work being done on the cliff-face at Glen­gad were peace­ful­ly protest­ing on the beach. How­ev­er the local com­mu­ni­ty were then forced off the beach to allow 10ft high fenc­ing to be placed down to the water edge. This has blocked of the right of way on Glen­gad beach. All attempt­ed ques­tions regard­ing the legal­i­ty and the con­sents for the work were ignored by both Gar­daí and Shell staff alike.

The legal­i­ty of the con­sents giv­en is still an issue of major con­cern to the peo­ple of the local­i­ty as it is still unclear what per­mis­sions Shell have received and for what exact work. While Min­is­ter for Ener­gy Eamon Ryan has claimed that it was just an “over­sight” that the lat­est autho­ri­sa­tions for the project was­n’t pub­lished, this cloud­ing of what con­sents have been grant­ed has been a char­ac­ter­is­tic of the whole Cor­rib Project.

Local res­i­dent Ter­ence Con­way said “The fact is that this first onshore sec­tion is the most dan­ger­ous part of the whole project as the pres­sure could be as high as 345bar and still it will not have gone through any plan­ning if it is con­struct­ed”.

Shell is now attempt­ing to con­struct the first 200m metres of the onshore sec­tion of the pipeline with­out it going through plan­ning per­mis­sion at all. Although the remain­ing 9.2km of the onshore pipeline is cur­rent­ly being exam­ined by An Bord Pleanala, Shell are attempt­ing to lay the first 200m metres before a deci­sion is made.

On Tues­day 22nd July, 13 res­i­dents were arrest­ed at Glen­gad, while chal­leng­ing Shell on the per­mis­sions they had to do exca­va­tion and oth­er works around the site of the pro­posed land­fall area of the pipeline. The arrest­ed peo­ple includ­ed Gold­man Prize win­ner Willie Cor­duff as well as Shell to Sea trail­er host­ess Mary Horan. The 13 were arrest­ed around 2pm and held at Bel­mul­let police sta­tion for 3 hours before being released with­out charge, with files being sent to the DPP. One of the peo­ple arrest­ed had to be brought by ambu­lance to Castle­bar Hos­pi­tal after see­ing a doc­tor in Bel­mul­let sta­tion. The mood of the arrestees after release was def­i­nite­ly one of res­olute defi­ance. After the 13 were arrest­ed, Shell attempt­ed to re-com­mence the exca­va­tion work how­ev­er anoth­er group of around 20 locals arrived and halt­ed the work for the remain­der of the day.

On Wednes­day 23rd July, a Shell dig­ger began clear­ing the top­soil from the area around the cliff-face to begin the pro­ce­dure of cre­at­ing a cause­way down to the beach. Rough­ly an hour lat­er they were request­ed by local res­i­dents to pro­duce the per­mis­sions but were only met with silence from the line of secu­ri­ty which at first tried to let the dig­ger con­tin­ue but even­tu­al­ly the dig­ger retired to behind secu­ri­ty gates.

While Shell have received a Fore­shore Licence in 2002 by the then Min­is­ter for the Marine and Nat­ur­al Resources for the off­shore part of the pipeline, this Licence is only valid up to high-water mark. How­ev­er Shell are seek­ing to do work that would involv­ing cre­at­ing a pipe pull-in facil­i­ty that would lay the pipeline up to the pro­posed pres­sure reduc­tion facil­i­ty which will be over 30m back from the cliff-face. Plan­ning per­mis­sion for all of the onshore pipeline sec­tion is cur­rent­ly before An Bord Pleanala since May 2008 under the new Strate­gic Infra­struc­ture Act and it is believed that an Oral hear­ing will be heard before An Bord Pleanala pro­vides the nec­es­sary rub­ber-stamp.

How­ev­er in the mean­time it is believed that all the work cur­rent­ly being done in Glen­gad doesn’t have the nec­es­sary per­mis­sion. Shell have now installed about 5 large port-cab­ins which include office and cafe­te­ria facil­i­ties on the Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion (SAC) only about 300m away from where the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp stood, until they were removed less than a year ago.

After about an hour stand­off, the gar­daí led by Super­in­ten­dent John Gilli­gan arrived at the scene, park­ing all their squads, jeeps and pad­dy wag­ons inside on the Shell com­pound on the SAC. After speak­ing with Shell per­son­nel, Supt Gilli­gan approached the group and was told about the con­cerns over the per­mis­sions for the work. Supt Gilli­gan was told that mem­bers of the assem­bled pro­tes­tors had met with Conor Ó Raghal­laigh, Direc­tor of the Nation­al Parks & Wildlife Ser­vice (NPWS) on the pre­vi­ous day and that it had been agreed that the nec­es­sary per­mis­sion were to be sought from the Dept of Ener­gy, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Nat­ur­al Resources and the Dept of Agri­cul­tu­ture & Fish­eries. How­ev­er, the Depart­ments hadn’t replied to any of the queries sent so far, and so it was request­ed by the pro­tes­tors that the work be halt­ed until the sit­u­a­tion was clar­i­fied. After again speak­ing with Shell per­son­nel, Supt. Gilli­gan said that Shell were will­ing to stop for 2 hours so queries could be made into the per­mis­sions grant­ed, how­ev­er he was told that it was believed that this would not be long enough. Supt. Gilli­gan was also remind­ed how last Octo­ber he had attempt­ed to push through drilling work in the area for Shell that was chal­lenged by locals and which was sub­se­quent­ly found to be ille­gal. Supt. Gilli­gan then once more spoke with Shell per­son­nel inside the com­pound and after warn­ing all the peo­ple assem­bled, peo­ple began to be arrest­ed.

I would like to say that I have been try­ing to estab­lish the legal­i­ty of these works for almost 2 weeks now, and have sent off count­less emails and made a lot of phone calls and am still no clear­er than when I began (and many oth­er peo­ple have hit blank walls too). I have been deal­ing pri­mar­i­ly with NPWS which is the sec­tion of the Dept of Envi­ron­ment whose duty it is to over­see work on SACs and oth­er sen­si­tive areas. I was first of all told on the phone that the work was under the Fore­shore Licence and I would receive a detailed email which would clar­i­fy my con­cerns. How­ev­er no clar­i­fi­ca­tion has been forth­com­ing and now NPWS have decid­ed to wash they hand of it and have start­ed refer­ring any queries to the oth­er 2 depart­ments involved. The whole episode once again shows way that this project has been split up from start to fin­ish and how no per­son or depart­ment will take any respon­si­bil­i­ty once ques­tioned.

It should be not­ed that NPWS in their report seek­ing the removal of the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, stat­ed that site where the camp was would take “10 to 15 years for the site to ful­ly recov­er” and rec­om­mend­ed that the camp be removed and “the habi­tats allowed to recov­er nat­u­ral­ly”. Now NPWS turn a blind eye when a whole com­pound (which is prob­a­bly ille­gal) has been set up.

One of the most infu­ri­at­ing sights of the day was the 2 NPWS rangers who hung out with the Shell paid ornithol­o­gist on the beach for the day watch­ing over the sand mar­tin colony while only 10 metres away a dig­ger had begun destroy­ing the cliff-face. Luck­i­ly how­ev­er the peo­ple of the local­i­ty have long giv­en up hope that any of these author­i­ties will pro­tect either them or their envi­ron­ment and took action.

If you wish to join the fight and vis­it the area, there is space to stay in the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty House ( http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.110mb.com).

The fight will go on regard­less but any help is invalu­able.
http://www.shelltosea.com