Gas craic? It's no laughing matter!

Youth voice on the Corrib gas saga: get out there and create a different country.

It looks like things are getting worse and worse in the North Mayo Gaelteacht following a week of action and drama. This has included protests, direct actions and now a hunger strike by the local national school principal.

Following eight years of campaigning by the local community and sympathetic people from around Ireland and the world it seems like D-Day arrived this week. The world’s biggest gas pipe laying ship, twice the length of Croke Park, attempted to start work at sea, laying the controversial gas pipe.

This saga has its roots in the eighties when Fianna Fail’s (now disgraced) Ray Burke and Frank Fahey were entertaining big business at the Galway Races and a company called Enterprise Energy were lobbying for favourable tax rates for oil and gas rights.

Years later Enterprise are gone but a new coalition of Shell, Statoil and Marathon discover up to €20 billion euros of gas off the coast of rural North Mayo. They set about a process of co-opting local clergy and business people and promising jobs and riches to the marginalised west of Ireland region.

The might of corporate power prevails and the project, after major reports and controversies, gets the go ahead for planning. An 80 km offshore pipeline is planned; bringing gas to what would be one of Europe’s largest gas refineries in the midst of a pristine natural environment.

The project runs into scandal after scandal. It turns out the project owners want to pump raw untreated gas at high pressure behind people’s homes without their consent. They want to build the refinery on unstable bogland and they set about bulldozing (quite literally) their way through people’s land and rights without consultation. The Irish government and most main parties look on. The Irish public looks bewildered. Suddenly five local men, who become known as ‘The Rossport five’ are jailed for forbidding Shell to trespass on their land. They spend two months in jail after a national series of protests. A major report from The Centre for Public Enquiry (www.publicenquiry.ie) exposes the background to what looks to be one of the most complex and rotten sagas in recent memory.

Locals join forces with activists and resistance continues, often in the midst of Garda violence and intimidation, whilst inexperienced local people attempt to deal with a slick Dublin based media more used to Shell’s PR department than hearing local voices.

In an Ireland with a crumbling health and education service, with limited public transport, with a malfunctioning political establishment and a generally apathetic and overly indebted public it seems the Corrib gas protests are holding the flame of the alternative, opposing a future where short-term thinking based on corrupt planning rail roads people’s democratic freedoms.

This gas, our gas, could mean a different Ireland. If it was brought ashore correctly. If people’s rights were respected. If the media told the truth. If the gas was taxed correctly. Then, well then we’d be looking at a new vision for Ireland. One that doesn’t continually mean bowing to gombeen men and slick oily characters who spend their lives in boxes encouraging others to do the same.

If we, the young generation were to wake up and shake up, then we could really start turning things around. It’s time to stop reading about protest and listening to songs of dissent. It’s time to get out there and set about creating a different country where we don’t continually end up in crisis after crisis, tribunal after tribunal.

Having said that, I’m booking my place for WHEN the Corrib gas tribunal occurs. I look forward to seeing the who’s who of Irish political and business life attempting to recall the events that led to the whole show coming crumbling around them.

By: Joe Cassidy

How to take action:

• Get involved with the Shell to Sea campaign. Find information here
  

• Sign the online petition.

Related links:

• Indymedia Ireland news reports: www.indymedia.ie
• Shell to Sea campaign: www.shelltosea.com
• Mayo Gas info: www.mayogasinfo.com
• Rossport Solidarity Camp: www.rossportsolidaritycamp.110mb.com/
• Shell Ireland: www.corribgas.com
• Statoil Ireland: www.statoil.ie
• Centre for Public Enquiry report: www.publicenquiry.ie