Mayo farmer to face criminal damage charge over Shell protest

26 July 2013 Ger­ry Bourke – a farmer from Augh­oose in Coun­ty Mayo – is insist­ing he has no case to answer after being hit with a crim­i­nal dam­age and tres­pass charge in rela­tion an inci­dent at Shell Ireland’s tun­nelling site in the vil­lage.

Gar­daí con­firmed to TheJournal.ie that a man was ques­tioned in rela­tion to an inci­dent at the site in Augh­oose on 22 June last by offi­cers at Bel­mul­let Sta­tion. The 48-year-old was arrest­ed and ques­tioned for around six hours yes­ter­day, before being released.

Bourke – who is a sup­port­er of the ‘Shell to Sea’ cam­paign – says he was engag­ing in a peace­ful protest with sev­er­al oth­ers on the date in ques­tion, and that he “couldn’t guess” as to why he was being charged with crim­i­nal dam­age. He told TheJournal.ie:

I was protest­ing at the site… I will keep protest­ing what’s going on as long as there’s life in my body.

He said the Shell to Sea cam­paign would con­tin­ue in order to draw atten­tion to the “unfair­ness” of what was hap­pen­ing in Mayo, adding:

Own­er­ship of oil and gas should belong to the peo­ple. You can­not have a sit­u­a­tion where­by peo­ple don’t own nat­ur­al resources. There has to be a fair deal done for the coun­try.

Ger­ry Bourke is due to appear in court in Bel­mul­let on 11 Sep­tem­ber.

A spokesper­son for Shell said that some dam­age had been caused at the site on the date in ques­tion, but declined to com­ment fur­ther as the case is now before the courts.

The Cor­rib Gas Project – which involves the extrac­tion of nat­ur­al gas from the north­west coast of the coun­try – has been the sub­ject of long-run­ning oppo­si­tion from ‘Shell to Sea’. Most recent­ly, the group erect­ed a series of signs close to a loca­tion where drilling was tak­ing place, warn­ing locals of the dan­ger posed by ‘sink holes’.