Rossport update

‘Gagged’ protest high­lights lack of democ­ra­cy in Mayo Forum

3 Novem­ber 2009

‘Gagged’ protest high­lights lack of democ­ra­cy in Mayo Forum
Rossport silenced banner invasion
3 Novem­ber 2009
This morn­ing An Bord Pleanala have announced that they are defer­ring the deci­sion on the onshore sec­tion of the Cor­rib Gas pipeline. Bord Pleanala says that approx­i­mate­ly 5.6km (or 62% of the whole onshore pipeline) is con­sid­ered unac­cept­able because of its prox­im­i­ty to dwelling hous­es locat­ed with­in its haz­ard range should a pipeline fail­ure occur. See the lat­est RTE news report on this here: http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/1103/corrib.html or Irish Times report: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/1103/…0.htm
More on the Bord Pleanala deci­sion will fol­low lat­er, this is a report on yes­ter­days Peo­ple’s Forum in Bel­mul­let and Min­is­ter’s Forum in Cor­ran Buí.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, saw the return of the People’s Forum to Bel­mul­let, which was attend­ed among oth­ers by a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Gar­da Ombuds­man. Dur­ing, this mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty who oppose the impo­si­tion of the Cor­rib Gas Project on the area, out­lined some of the issues they have had with the polic­ing of the protests and the sub­se­quent efforts and fail­ures of the Gar­da Ombuds­man. In the after­noon, the com­mu­ni­ty moved and went to hold a silent protest at the Min­is­ters Forum. Some peo­ple taped their mouths shut to show how the com­mu­ni­ty have been silenced to facil­i­tate Shell. This forum is offi­cial­ly called the “North West Mayo Devel­op­ment Forum” but is known local­ly as the “Fun­ny Forum” and it cer­tain­ly lived up to this local name, and it tru­ly was cringe wor­thy to see some of sup­pos­ed­ly most pow­er­ful peo­ple in the Mayo and the coun­try per­form in this cha­rade.

The point has been made numer­ous times that the Fun­ny Forum is pure­ly for media spin and to project the image to the wider pub­lic that the pow­ers that be are address­ing the con­cerns of the com­mu­ni­ty. How­ev­er noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. In the Mayo News today, a quote from a spokes­woman for Eamon Ó Cuív stat­ed “The min­is­ters were delight­ed that Shell to Sea attend­ed the forum, even if they had their mouths taped and did not par­tic­i­pate”. Per­haps what she could have real­ly added was “This is exact­ly the type of par­tic­i­pa­tion we real­ly want from the com­mu­ni­ty”. See: http://www.mayonews.ie/index.php?option=com_content&tas…id=38

In a joint state­ment from Pobal Chill Chomáin and Pobal le Chéile, they state “the so-called forum is com­plete­ly ignor­ing the health and safe­ty issues sur­round­ing the Cor­rib gas project, yet these are the spe­cif­ic issues that are con­tin­u­ing to give rise to con­flict and dis­agree­ment in Erris’. It con­tin­ued: “The Min­is­ters’ forum is wide­ly regard­ed with­in our com­mu­ni­ty as a sham, and is being used not as an instru­ment of con­flict res­o­lu­tion but as an instru­ment for Cor­rib project advance­ment.”

The Min­is­ters forum had a pre­sen­ta­tion from Dept of Ener­gy & Nat­ur­al Resources as well as the Gar­da Ombuds­man, a short speech from Eamon Ó Cuív about the mon­ey they have giv­en recent­ly to the area. Final­ly Denise Horan who has recent­ly joined Shel­l’s PR team from the lofty post of Edi­tor of the Mayo News then gave a pre­sen­ta­tion of the bribes Shell had also hand­ed out.

The Gar­da Ombuds­man pre­sen­ta­tion, was giv­en by the Ombuds­man­’s head of com­mu­ni­ca­tions Kier­an FitzGer­ald and he told the Min­is­ter’s Forum that 111 com­plaints had been received in rela­tion to the Cor­rib protests. Of these 78 were deemed admis­si­ble and 33 were deemed inad­mis­si­ble for inves­ti­ga­tion. Some 55 files were “closed”– i.e. the inves­ti­ga­tion had been com­plet­ed – and 23 cas­es were still open. How­ev­er his pre­sen­ta­tion was met with more or less silence from the assem­bled forum mem­bers. This was in marked con­trasts with the ear­li­er Peo­ple’s Forum.

The People’s Forum got off to a slow start, but when Gra­ham Doyle, com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cer for the Gar­da Ombuds­man arrived things livened up. He was a last minute stand in for head of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the Ombuds­man Kevin Fitz­patrick (who mys­te­ri­ous­ly was able to make the “Fun­ny Forum”), and as such didn’t have any of the sta­tis­tics about com­plaints relat­ing to the Cor­rib Gas Project. Mr Doyle did engage well with the forum, how­ev­er it became clear very quick­ly that a lot of the peo­ple present were over­all fair­ly dis­il­lu­sioned with the effec­tive­ness of the Gar­da Ombuds­man. A lot of the speak­ers present made the point that the Gar­da Ombuds­man seems to be try­ing inves­ti­gate the com­plaints but at the end of the weren’t achiev­ing any results. A few peo­ple quot­ed cas­es where they’re was very strong evi­dence (one had 5 eye­wit­ness and par­tial video evi­dence of an assault, anoth­er had clear foren­sic evi­dence of crim­i­nal dam­age) and that the Ombuds­man had sent the cas­es for­ward to the DPP for pros­e­cu­tion how­ev­er the DPP refused to pros­e­cute. This bot­tle­neck at the DPP, who refuse to pros­e­cute with any cas­es against Gar­daí involv­ing Shell to Sea protests seem to be a par­tic­u­lar point of con­tention. Mr Doyle admit­ted that the Gar­da Ombuds­man had a lot of work to do to prove their cred­i­bil­i­ty.

One, very mov­ing speech came from Win­fred Mack­lin, who spoke of her involve­ment in the after­math of a gas explo­sion in Scot­land of a pipeline which was run­ning at between 4 & 9 bar pres­sure. The Cor­rib Gas Pipeline is designed to run up to 345 bar pres­sure until Glen­gad and up to 144 bar between Glen­gad and Bel­lan­aboy. Ms Mack­lin also urged the Ombuds­man to speak out against the Gar­da vio­lence and quot­ed Man­dela who said that “silence is col­lab­o­ra­tion”. See a clip from Ms Mack­lin speech here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w21g0QVOio

The Ombuds­man rep­re­sen­ta­tive told the forum that they had sought per­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate the polic­ing of crowds under Sec­tion 106 of the Gar­da Síochá­na Act, how­ev­er this had been refused by the Min­is­ter for Jus­tice, Der­mot Ahern. After Mr Doyle stat­ed that he didn’t want to com­ment on indi­vid­ual cas­es, one con­trib­u­tor state that peo­ple weren’t ask­ing the Ombuds­man to com­ment on indi­vid­ual cas­es but they should be com­ment­ing on the over­all vio­lence of the Gar­daí and that silence thus far by the Ombuds­man Com­mis­sion was rep­re­hen­si­ble.

One point made was that the way the Ombuds­man was ini­tial­ly set up, they were con­strict­ed on all sides from the DPP, the Min­is­ter for Jus­tice, Gar­da Com­mis­sion­er and then infor­mal­ly by pres­sure brought to bear by the Gar­da Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Asso­ci­a­tion.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/1103/1224257962988.html

More pho­tos at http://www.indymedia.ie/article/94646