I will begin our presentation with a quote from a letter that the three priests of Cill Chomáin parish in north-west Mayo wrote to then Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan, in October 2007. The letter referred to ongoing difficulties with the proposed Corrib gas development.
The project as planned for Bellinaboy does not have consent from the community. Indications are that the majority of people in the parish are opposed to it. They are the receiving community whose lives and future are at the centre of the negative impact and potential risks.
This is the central issue in our area. There is no community consent for an experimental development with potentially catastrophic consequences for our health, safety and environment. A proposal was put to the Minister the following month in a second letter from the parish:
In an attempt to find some resolution to the current impasse we suggest that an alternative site for the refinery should be explored ... We believe such a solution is technically and economically feasible ... It would be our fervent hope that this solution would ... bring the sorry history of this project to a peaceful and just conclusion.
Our group - Pobal Chill Chomáin - was established in response to this proposal to explore the possibility of resolving the Corrib conflict by mutual agreement. We felt that Shell and Statoil could bring their product to the market while the local community preserved the integrity of the area. While the issues of State participation in and ownership of Irish resources relate to the Corrib development - and any other development - under the existing licensing system, to us they are secondary to health and safety issues. As citizens of this Republic, we take an interest in these matters of national importance. We will briefly offer some observations as a result of our experience over the last 12 years.
Having dealt with every level of local and national government on the Corrib issue, we have developed deep reservations about the ability of the various agencies to administer their stated duties impartially. A reference to difficulties in another jurisdiction may help to illustrate this point. I refer to a report submitted to the US President in January 2011, Deep Water - The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling. The report, which refers to the Minerals Management Service, MMS, says that on 11 May 2010, which was 19 days after the rig sank, the "Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced his intention to strip MMS's safety and environmental enforcement responsibilities away from its leasing, revenue collection, and permitting functions, and to place the former within a "separate and independent" entity". According to the report, "MMS had ceased to exist" by June 19, which was two months after the accident. The report argued that "the rig's demise signals the conflicted evolution - and severe shortcomings - of federal regulation of offshore oil drilling in the United States, and particularly of MMS oversight of deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico".
Chapter 3 of the Deep Water report, which has been supplied, describes the Minerals Management Service, which was the US equivalent of the petroleum affairs division of the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, as a "Cross-Purposes Regulator". The MMS was both a regulator and promoter of the exploration industry. The pressure of pushing the exploration frontier into the wider waters of the continental shelf led to a continued erosion of effective oversight. The website of the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources states "the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources ... regulates, protects and develops the Natural Resources of Ireland." It says that the key task of the petroleum exploration and extraction division is "policy development, promotion, licensing and regulation of exploration and production of petroleum in the Irish offshore and onshore". The same conflicting interests are at play in our own system. We contend that this dual role of regulator and promoter has led directly to the difficulties with Corrib, and will continue to do so into the future if left unquestioned and unchanged.
The unsuitability of the Corrib proposal was never more clearly put than in an assessment that was included in a 2005 report of the Centre for Public Inquiry. The report mentions that in his report on the 2002 gas refinery planning hearings, a senior planning inspector, Mr. Kevin Moore, was adamant that the development was taking place on the wrong site "from a strategic planning perspective", "from the perspective of Government policy which seeks to foster balanced regional development", "from the perspective of minimising environmental impact", and "consequently, from the perspective of sustainable development". Mr. Moore's submission was that "the proposed development of a large gas processing terminal at this rural, scenic, and unserviced area on a bog land hill some 8 kilometres inland from the Mayo coastland landfall location, with all its site development works difficulties, public safety concerns, adverse visual, ecological, and traffic impacts, and a range of other significant environmental impacts, defies any rational understanding of the term "sustainability". It was an emphatic condemnation of a planned refinery for Bellinaboy.
The minutes of a meeting of Royal Dutch Shell Group managing directors in July 2003 show how the industry responded at the time:
It was noted that development of the Corrib field may be delayed until 2004 as planning consent had been refused for the terminal. The Committee queried whether the Group had sufficiently well placed contacts with the Irish government and regulators. [A named individual] undertook to explore this issue further in consultation with the Country Chairman in Ireland.
The 2005 report of the Centre for Public Inquiry says that following this discussion, in September 2003:
Senior executives of Shell E&P were granted a meeting with the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, the former Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Dermot Ahern, and former Minister for the Environment, Martin Cullen and senior government officials to express their concerns over planning delays. Within a week representatives of the consortium seeking to develop the Corrib gas field were granted a meeting with the chairman of An Bord Pleanála, John O'Connor, and members of the planning appeals board to discuss their concerns.
The following year, planning for the Bellinaboy refinery was secured at the third attempt. The sequence of events I have outlined clearly shows the influence of the oil and gas industry in this jurisdiction. By contrast, the community affected by these decisions has had almost zero success in raising concerns with those in authority, never mind getting those concerns addressed. A current example of this is our group's efforts to meet the Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, which we requested in June of this year. Five months later, we are still waiting for a response.
All of this can be compared with the Norwegian approach, as set out in a document, Facts 2005 - The Norwegian Petroleum Sector. The document describes the approach that was taken to the fledgeling exploration industry there in the 1960s as:
We understand that you are interested in exploring for oil in the North Sea. We hold the rights to this and we do not intend to grant any licences before we know what we are doing. We are quite simply giving you a challenge: Educate us.
It is to our shame that the cry from this side of the British mainland seems to be "subjugate us". As a result of a series of backroom handshakes, which culminated in the jailing and eventual release of the Rossport Five, and 15 months of unbroken peaceful protest against the refinery project, we eventually got a measured response from the State in the form of an invading police force that was bent on breaking protest and protestors. In November 2006, several weeks into the assault on our community led by a new Garda superintendent, the Garda Review magazine reported:
There were no arrests. That was part of our strategy; we did not want to facilitate anyone down there with a route to martyrdom. That has been the policy ever since.
This was an appalling period of brutality that included constant harassment, violence, the use of Garda batons and verbal and physical abuse. It was summed up in the following key points detailed in the human rights and policing report which was published by the San Francisco based Global Community Monitor in 2007: "Lack of appropriate management of protest situations"; "Refusal by Gardaí to arrest peaceful protestors prepared to be arrested to make a political statement"; "Loss of public support for and faith in Gardaí and Government"; "Harassment of Shell project opponents in public places and homes by Gardaí not during protests"; "Excessive force by Gardaí resulting in serious injury"; "Verbal threats by Gardaí inciting violence"; "Large Gardaí presence in small rural community creating sensitive atmosphere and threatening local culture and values"; "Failure of complaint system against Gardaí removes remedies"; "Elderly, women and children physically abused by Gardaí without provocation"; and "Emergency response and treatment denied or delayed to injured protestors".
In September 2007, the Minister for Foreign Affairs expressed his concern for protesters thus:
The use of physical force ... against... unarmed civilians, who have committed their lives to the path of non-violence, and who are simply exercising the basic right of freedom of expression in a peaceful manner, is unacceptable and deeply shocking. All people of conscience throughout the world... must condemn the use of force against unarmed civilians, demonstrating peacefully..."
Unfortunately for us, the Minister was commenting on the situation in Burma and his comments completely ignored what was taking place at the same time in County Mayo.
Since late 2006, the parish of Kilcommon has too often resembled an open prison, with seasonal surges of development works and accompanying periods of lock-down involving large numbers of gardaí, including armed units, Naval Service gunships, helicopters, prison vans and communications units and, increasingly and most worrying, private security operatives hired by the oil companies. We now have circumstances in which the Corrib workers who are almost entirely imported are regularly chaperoned by security and gardaí, while local residents and visitors are hampered, harassed and intimidated, and prevented from going about their lawful business by Shell security and gardaí acting outside the law and in concert. A stark example of this can be seen in the multi-award winning documentary "The Pipe", of which copies are available to members, where the often cited right to go to work does not apply, for example, to the fishermen of Erris.
Many of these issues are outlined in the 2010 Front Line report "Breakdown in Trust". The following points from the report highlight rights issues and the overall circumstances surrounding the protest:
It is clear that the Corrib gas dispute raises human rights issues... In view of the real questions raised as to the safety of the pipeline, and in view of the ... findings of An Bord Pleanála that its safety had not been demonstrated, those concerns cannot be disregarded... Protesters do not appear to be motivated merely by protection of their own economic interests... The situation can be characterised as one where some groups are clearly seeking to defend human rights and where the rights set out in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders are applicable.... There have been acts of criminal damage against Shell property ... There have been other allegations of intimidation also. This however does not characterise the overall situation... Some but not all of what people call intimidation simply involves people no longer talking to each other... Allegations of republican direction of protests in Mayo appear unfounded and inaccurate.
This report, possibly more than any other assessment outside of Lorna Siggins's book Once Upon A Time In The West, captures many of the realities of living with the oil and gas industry in our area and serves to bust many of the myths about Corrib and its opponents. Two recent sources can also be used to briefly demonstrate the ongoing situation in Kilcommon. The first is an outsider’s view of community issues which was published as an extensive article in the The Observer magazine in May of this year. The contents page sums up the article and the dispute in a short and not so sweet manner under the heading: “How an Irish community is being torn apart by Shell”. The second can be found at the end of a YouTube clip featuring a video taken at the roadside near the current pipeline works site in Aughoose last August. It shows people trying, as concerned citizens, to report to gardaí an alleged assault on them by one of the Shell-Statoil security enforcers. Instead of investigating the complaint or even humouring the complainants, the Garda members present threaten them with arrest for unspecified reasons. In one unguarded moment a shard of truth is spoken by an aggressive policeman when he states: “You are entitled to be a citizen but not here.”
This is the reality we face every day and one that we, as active citizens, will never accept. If these issues are deemed by members to be of no importance, then by all means the joint committee should do nothing and thereby allow the oil industry to call all the shots, repeatedly break the law and abuse human rights under the guise of progress and sanctioned at every turn by the State through inaction. If that is not the case and the ongoing and unresolved problems of Corrib can be used to improve the regime in this jurisdiction, then the committee must act. For our part, we call for a complete and retrospective review of the consenting process and all licensing terms to properly protect communities from the abuses to which we are subjected and, especially in these harsh economic times, truly serve the common good.