July 24, 2005
So what the hell is going on in North Mayo?
A while back, a pilot working for Ryanair sought to have its CEO, Michael O'Leary and two other executives jailed for contempt of court. Of course it didn't happen, and the dispute was eventually settled after a couple of adjournements in the High Court. Such is the way when you have heavyweight legal expertise to fight your corner.
Five Mayo men have now spent a month in jail for defying a court order obtained by Shell to prevent them opposing preparation for pipe-laying work on their lands. On Thursday, the Minister for Marine and Natural Resources (and now responsible for the state contract with Shell), Noel Dempsey stated that there would be chaos if everybody ignored a court order in the way that five had done.
Forty-eight hours later, the same minister admitted that Shell had breached the terms of their planning permission (it is the Minister that grants the pipeline permission), and had begun working on the pipleline already. Shell have now stopped any further work on the pipeline...which is what the five men were trying to achieve in the first place.
There is a wider question. How could Shell obtain a court order to prevent people interfering with what has turned out to be an illegal activity? The Irish Independent reported on July 15th that
The original court order of April 4 last restrained a number of named defendants or anyone with notice from obstructing or interfering with entry by Shell E and P Ireland Ltd onto lands for the purposes of "preparation, construction and installation" of the pipeline and ancillary works.
The land in question belongs to the five men in prison, not Shell. And now it seems that Shell itself is in contempt of the planning process by actually building the pieline itself with permission. Will anyone from Shell appear before the courts? I doubt it. Will the five be released on Monday ? Who knows...
Colm Rapple, in an interview on 5-7 Live on July 14th, has his own theory as to why the pipeline is being built with a much higher capacity than any other similar pipeline in Europe. The Minister is about to give out more licences for exploration off the Mayo coast (presumably on the same give-away-for-nothing terms as the Shell ones). Shell's pipeline would be very useful for taking the gas from the other fields as well. The entire interview is worth listening to - it's in RealAudio.
It's interesting to see how the political parties are reacting to the events in Mayo. Jerry Crowley is the local independent TD and he has been the most vocal political supporter of the five men. Government deputies have, by and large, kept their heads down and have avoided any of the public rallies held for the jailed men. That's to be expected. But what about the opposition. Pearse Doherty is a rising start in Sinn Fein and polled second in the Connacht constituency in the European elections last year after the first count. However, he got almost no transfers and subsequently came fourth in the three seater, and I'm guessing most of his vote came from Donegal. He has become involved in the wider debate over the conditions of the next set of contracts and it will be interesting to see how it affects his political profile in Mayo as a result. As for the main opposition parties, they have been remarkably quiet.
Enda Kenny has been very cautious, and Pat Rabbitt equally so. Now, the reality is that there isn't much they can do to change the current situation, but the political reality is that, if roles were reversed, you'd have Fianna Fail politicans making blood-curdling speeches invoking 1798 and all that. The great advantage of being in oppostion is that you can pretty much say what you want. Maybe Enda and Pat are already thinking about when they are Taoiseach and Tanasite respectively (which is maybe just a little too confident). If these guys are this diffident in opposition, they're hardly going to be too radical in government.
mayo, ireland, irishblogs,monasette
Posted by Monasette at July 24, 2005 08:51 PM