John Gormley interrupted by Plane Mad

Novem­ber 5, 2008
Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley was inter­rupt­ed dur­ing his speech to the Green Infra­struc­ture con­fer­ence this morn­ing in Malahide. The envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign group Plane Mad dis­rupt­ed the con­fer­ence to express their oppo­si­tion to anoth­er run­way at Dublin Air­port. The group oppose the run­way on the grounds that it will dou­ble the air­craft emis­sions at the air­port. These emis­sions play a dan­ger­ous part in caus­ing cli­mate change. Two activists dressed as car­toon crim­i­nals mimed build­ing a run­way around the podi­um that Gorm­ley was speak­ing from. Air­craft noise was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly played from the back of the room. One of the “crim­i­nals” moved among the audi­ence pass­ing out infor­ma­tion about the pro­posed new run­way form his bag of “swag”. The min­is­ter was also pre­sent­ed with a let­ter by the group which he accept­ed.

The activists were dressed as crim­i­nals to rep­re­sent the crime that it would be if Fin­gal Coun­ty Coun­cil and the Dublin Air­port Authority(DAA) were allowed to dou­ble capac­i­ty at Dublin Air­port. The activists had “DAA-CLIMATE CRIMINALS” writ­ten on their backs.

Min­is­ter Gorm­ley said that he agreed with them on this issue, indeed he had men­tioned the “seri­ous threat” of cli­mate change sev­er­al times in his speech. After the cam­paign­ers had made their point they were peace­ful­ly escort­ed out of the con­fer­ence suite and Mr Gorm­ley was allowed to con­tin­ue. Despite all he says Plane Mad con­tin­ue to be dis­ap­point­ed that nei­ther John Gorm­ley or his par­ty are clear or vocal enough in their oppo­si­tion to expan­sion at Dublin Air­port.

Ian Clot­wor­thy, one of car­toon crim­i­nals, said
“Fin­gal Coun­ty Coun­cil are not fit hosts for a green infra­struc­ture con­fer­ence when one of the least “green” pieces of infra­struc­ture in Ire­land is cur­rent­ly being built at Dublin Air­port.”
“We sup­port “UPROAR” in their cam­paign against this sec­ond run­way and we oppose it our­selves because of the con­tri­bu­tion of avi­a­tion emis­sions to cli­mate change”

UPROAR (Unit­ed Port­marnock res­i­dents oppos­ing anoth­er run­way) have been oppos­ing the con­struc­tion of a 2nd run­way for 8 years, since 2000. 850 peo­ple from the area object­ed to the run­way after the cam­paign was launched around Christ­mas 2000. UPROAR were ini­tial­ly extreme­ly suc­cess­ful in that the Inspec­tor review­ing the Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment (EIS) and all the infor­ma­tion avail­able about the planned devel­op­ment found in favour of the objec­tors. The Inspec­tor rec­om­mend­ed that the plan­ning appli­ca­tion be refused on main­ly on the issue of noise pol­lu­tion and com­mu­ni­ty wel­fare. Her deci­sion how­ev­er, was over­turned by An Bord Pleanala.

Tara Shee­hy of Plane Mad who was also in the con­fer­ence suit in Malahide said,
“Dou­bling capac­i­ty at Dublin Air­port will also dou­ble the amount of emis­sions. Spend­ing mon­ey in an eco­nom­ic down­turn on such a project of pol­lu­tion is mad­ness.”

The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency allo­cat­ed just over 20,000 tonnes CO2 equiv­a­lent for each of the years 2005, 2006 and 2007 to Dublin Air­port. This is only 1% of the 2 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 (at least), emit­ted by Dublin Air­port’s 21 mil­lion pas­sen­gers.

On a day when even Amer­i­ca can elect a pres­i­dent who claims to under­stand the impor­tance of cli­mate change, Plane Mad would like to see this “Green-tinged” gov­ern­ment halt their air­port expan­sion plans. Plane Mad will con­tin­ue to fight the sec­ond run­way until it is stopped.

http://www.planemad.org