Community halts Shell

Feb­ru­ary 12 2008

Sur­vey work was halt­ed
This morn­ing sur­vey work stopped when mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty ques­tioned Ollie Mur­ray (Shell Com­mu­ni­ty Lia­son Offi­cer) on whether he had the nec­es­sary per­mis­sion. He is a man of few words and our ques­tions were met with his mantra of ‘I don’t know, con­tact RPS’. ‘’Do you have the RPS num­ber? No. ‘’. It was a beau­ti­ful day and whilst we were wait­ing for the RPS engi­neer to ring back with details (at 22.00pm he still hasn’t), the sur­vey­or admired the view of the pris­tine bay in Glen­gad. No sur­vey work was under­tak­en. The bore hoels ille­gal­ly con­struct­ed 5 months ago are still there, despite Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley order­ing their removal asp.

BroadhavenFeb­ru­ary 12 2008

Sur­vey work was halt­ed
This morn­ing sur­vey work stopped when mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty ques­tioned Ollie Mur­ray (Shell Com­mu­ni­ty Lia­son Offi­cer) on whether he had the nec­es­sary per­mis­sion. He is a man of few words and our ques­tions were met with his mantra of ‘I don’t know, con­tact RPS’. ‘’Do you have the RPS num­ber? No. ‘’. It was a beau­ti­ful day and whilst we were wait­ing for the RPS engi­neer to ring back with details (at 22.00pm he still hasn’t), the sur­vey­or admired the view of the pris­tine bay in Glen­gad. No sur­vey work was under­tak­en. The bore hoels ille­gal­ly con­struct­ed 5 months ago are still there, despite Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley order­ing their removal asp.

Blockad­ing of trucks
Of course the com­mu­ni­ty are still attempt­ing to slow down con­struc­tion on the Shell refin­ery site. Block­ades hap­pen as much as pos­si­ble; last week work­ers were once again block­ad­ed and today lor­ries were blocked from enter­ing. When the author­i­ties fail to pro­tect the com­mu­ni­ty and the Spe­cial Pro­tect­ed Area, the com­mu­ni­ty have no choice but to active­ly do it our­selves. For rea­sons of health, safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, we can­not let this refin­ery be built at Bal­linaboy.

’Peo­ple are enti­tled to a healthy and pro­duc­tive life in har­mo­ny with nature. Envi­ron­men­tal issues are best han­dled with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of all con­cerned cit­i­zens. Devel­op­ment today must not under­mine the devel­op­ment and envi­ron­men­tal needs of present and future gen­er­a­tions.’ Local Agen­da 21

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12.2.08 Local peo­ple block Shell from ille­gal work in a SAC at Glen­gad, Erris for 4 hours until Gar­dai force through work­ers, injur­ing pro­test­ers.

At approx 8am this morn­ing, local res­i­dents became aware of a Shell con­tract­ed sur­vey team in the Glen­gad area on the SAC. To work in this area we under­stand that per­mis­sions must be obtained pri­or to any work being under­tak­en by Shell. Shell have still yet repaired the ille­gal work done last Octo­ber.

To our knowl­edge, they are only enti­tled to remove the ille­gal bore­holes, as ordered by Min­is­ter Gorm­ley. Our requests for evi­dence of oth­er per­mis­sion con­tin­ues to be ignored by both Shell, RPS and NPWS. Today’s sur­vey­ing had noth­ing to do with repair­ing the dam­age how­ev­er, despite claims to the con­trary by secu­ri­ty staff.

Despite con­tact­ing Shell’s sup­posed pub­lic lia­sons offi­cer in the last few days no attempt has been made by Shell to clar­i­fy if they have any oth­er of the required per­mis­sions.

A group of local peo­ple were forced to enter upon the land to stop this ille­gal work. Work was halt­ed between 8am until approx 12 noon when a force of over a dozen Gar­dai came to escort the sur­vey team back onto the SAC.

Despite explain­ing why the local com­mu­ni­ty had rea­son­able excuse to stop fur­ther dam­age being done, the Gar­dai very force­ful­ly removed all pro­test­ers from the entrance gate, ush­er­ing in the sur­vey team. In their zeal­ous pur­suit of Shell’s best inter­ests, the Gar­dai assault­ed many of the approx 10 pro­test­ers present at the time. 1 man was arrest­ed after being shoved onto a barbed wire fence, cut­ting his arm in sev­er­al places before hav­ing his head banged off the ground by sev­er­al Gar­dai. Oth­ers were dragged off, received kicks, shoves, had hair pulled, while the Gar­dai simul­ta­ne­ous­ly obstruct­ed the only cam­era from film­ing. The man who was arrest­ed was lat­er released with­out charge.