Today, Wednes­day 21 Octo­ber, Shell to Sea stopped work at an ille­gal Shell site for the entire day when a cam­paign­er climbed onto the arm of a dig­ger which was lay­ing bog mats, in prepa­ra­tion for drilling works.

Shell moved into Glen­gad this morn­ing, prepar­ing to drill bore holes in a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion (SAC). Shell to Sea main­tain that this work is ille­gal, because Shell do not have plan­ning per­mis­sion from An Bord Pleanála for the onshore pipeline yet; it is due with­in the next day or two. Shell con­firmed this morn­ing that the only author­i­ty they are rely­ing upon to car­ry out drilling in Glen­gad is per­mis­sion from the landown­er, but in order to drill on an SAC, Shell must get the per­mis­sion of the Min­is­ter for the Envi­ron­ment under the the EC Habi­tats Reg­u­la­tions. Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil was not aware that there was any work being car­ried out in Glen­gad today.

In Octo­ber 2007 Shell were proven to be ille­gal­ly drilling on an SAC, and Min­is­ter for Envi­ron­ment John Gorm­ley ordered them to remove their works and return the habi­tat to its orig­i­nal form. Com­ment­ing on this ille­gal drilling, Gorm­ley said “The actions of the Shell con­trac­tors in enter­ing a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion and car­ry­ing out works with­out autho­ri­sa­tion are a mat­ter of seri­ous con­cern to me. I find it unac­cept­able that this has occurred at a time when my Depart­ment has been mak­ing spe­cial efforts to keep in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Shell dur­ing the course of this project to date.”

Shell are now try­ing to do it again in the same SAC, two years lat­er- how­ev­er they’ve found it impos­si­ble with peo­ple climb­ing onto their machin­ery and occu­py­ing it. An entire day’s work was stopped today when locals res­i­dents entered the field where Shell was work­ing. Shell was using a digger/forklift to place bog­mats on the field, prepar­ing for heavy machin­ery to be able to dri­ve onto the field. Cam­paign­ers and locals stood around for a bit watch­ing this hap­pen­ing, and before long the Gar­daí showed up with their cam­eras and their Sec­tion 8. The Gar­daí were told that the work going on was ille­gal, that Shell had no per­mis­sion to be drilling in an SAC. Unsur­pris­ing­ly they were only inter­est­ed in mak­ing sure the Shell lor­ry with the bog­mats got through. Over­all this was the extent of the Gar­daí’s involve­ment (besides the usu­al harass­ing and peer­ing into car win­dows). The Guards seemed to want to leave it with IRMS to deal with peo­ple on the pri­vate land (where their Sec­tion 8 does­n’t apply).

When peo­ple start­ed enter­ing the field, IRMS ini­tial­ly got rough, shov­ing and throw­ing peo­ple around, but Jim Far­rell (their boss) told them to “Calm down lads, let them go” and he had to ‘reign them in’ a few times. One cam­paign­er sat on a pile of bog mats for a peri­od of time, while the Shell work­ers con­tin­ued lay­ing bog mats from oth­er piles and left him there. After a peri­od of time, they need­ed the pile of bog mats the per­son was sit­ting on, and as a hand­ful of IRMS sur­round­ed him to try and move him, anoth­er cam­paign­er made a run for the dig­ger and climbed up the arm. Imme­di­ate­ly Dim­it­ry S, an IRMS employ­ee who has tes­ti­fied against Shell to Sea peo­ple in the past, was pulling at the cam­paign­er’s leg, despite him being in a pre­car­i­ous posi­tion. His boss, Jim Far­rel, had to tell him to stop and let go of the per­son­’s leg, because it was clear­ly unsafe. The dig­ger-occu­pi­er stayed up there for six hours, and there was lots of sup­port from the com­mu­ni­ty. Locals showed up bring­ing tea and sand­wich­es for the crowd that had gath­ered on the road. Once all the work­ers had gone home and it was clear that a day’s work had been suc­cess­ful­ly stopped, the dig­ger-occu­pi­er got down from the arm with­out much has­sle.

Over­all it was a good day, though IRMS seems increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed, bla­tant­ly antag­o­nis­ing the local com­mu­ni­ty. After the dig­ger-occu­pi­er had got­ten down and as oth­er locals were leav­ing the field, one of the IRMS qui­et­ly dared one of the local peo­ple to ‘just try and do this when it gets dark’

Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp
— e‑mail: rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com
— Home­page: http://www.shelltosea.com