The great oil and gas robbery

Some time ago I contacted Cloverhill prison to arrange a visit with the five men imprisoned there at that time for br...eaching the injunction by Shell which denied them the right to protest against the huge gas pipeline being driven through their land in west Mayo. The prison authorities were very cooperative. It is normal practice for public representatives to visit prisoners, even in Northern Ireland where the British administration facilitates such visits. But the Minister of Justice Michael McDowell takes a different view and on the eve of the visit I learned that I was barred from Cloverhill. I immediately contacted the Department of Justice and spoke to the Secretary General who could offer me no explanation for this arbitrary decision.
On Friday 23 September, a senior Sinn Féin delegation met with the Taoiseach, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Justice to discuss the evolving peace process. All in attendance agreed privately, and later publicly, that it was a good and positive engagement. And so it was. When it was over I took Michael McDowell to one side and shook hands. “Am I still barred from visiting the Rossport Five?” I asked him.
“Yes”, he said. “Why?” I asked. “Because that's my decision”, he said.
On Wednesday 28 September I did get a visit to Cloverhill. But it wasn't with the Minister's permission. The Ó Seighin family gave up one of their visits so that Sinn Féin's Brian Leeson, Martin Ferris TD and I spent an hour with Micheál Ó Seighin, one of the Rossport Five. Micheál received us very graciously in the small visiting box. He is a small, quietly-spoken man in his late 60s. “Tá sibhse ag dhéanamh obair go hiontach. Congratulations. Bhí an scéal Dé Luan go han, han mhaith. Ceim mhór”, he said.
“Tá a lán le dhéanamh go foill”, I said. “Cad é mar atá rudaí anseo?”
“Tá muid maith go leor. We are getting a huge amount of support. Up to 140 cards a day so that helps and I had my mind made on this for a long time. We had really no choice and the other lads are very strong.”
“It's a long time to be here. How are your families?”
“The entire community is with us and all of our families are totally committed. We're very well organised over the last number of years.”
“Is this where you get your visits?”
“We get closed visits”, he said. “There is a screen between us and our families. We have no physical contact on visits.”
“Even the Brits don't do that”, I said.
Micheál grinned at us.
“I knew nothing about prisons before coming here but the people who are in and out of jail hate Cloverhill. They say that it is worse than the Joy and the Midlands. I suppose it's to deal with the drugs problem. Drugs are creating havoc everywhere it seems. I never knew it was so bad until I came here. I've met some young men here who are not going to last on the outside. They told me that. One of them, he's from Ballymun, was telling me about the turf wars. ‘Two things I'm sure of', he told me. ‘I'll be back on drugs when I get out. And I'll be killed.'”
It was obvious that Micheál cared deeply about all this. He had a book with him. Nature's Way by Ian Stewart. I told him that we had left some books in for him and the other men. “This book's about chaos”, he said. “A butterfly can flap its wings in Tokyo and cause a storm halfway across the world.”
Martin Ferris had been at the Dáil committee which had questioned the Minister Noel Dempsey the evening before. He gave Micheál an account of that meeting and they discussed the Government's handling of the issue.
“I told Shell a few years ago that this whole issue was going to end up in disaster. I said at the beginning that this cannot work. Go back to the drawing board, we told them. But Shell wouldn't listen.
“They got a weak government with corrupt ministers and took everything they could. If they had handled these matters differently we would have worked with them. They didn't. The pipeline breaches all of the safety codes. I knew nothing about any of these things before this but now I know an awful lot. There are three codes and the pipe contravenes them all. It contravenes the British codes for safety, the Irish codes, and the US codes. Normally production pipelines are not run past houses and there are very strict regulations. All of these are breached. When Frank Fahy was the minister he moved to sign a compulsory requisition order in the dying days of the last government. This effectively gave Shell the right to proceed. The government moved without a safety report. Subsequently, a safety report was done but it was by a company associated with Shell. When that was revealed an independent safety review was ordered and we're waiting for that report.”
Micheál said all of this in a quiet understated way. Every so often he would chuckle as he responded to our questions. For example, when I asked him what was the pipeline like he said, “Shell told us it was a very thick pipeline. We told them that the pipeline might be very thick but we're not.”
I had heard that heavy metal deposits were being dumped back into the sea. He is obviously a man who thinks and ponders on all these matters and in response to my questions he gave detailed answers.
“Yes”, he said. “Originally they wanted to dump it in Broadhaven Bay which is a special area of conservation under the EU. It is also internationally important because it supports important populations of birds, among them Brent Geese. That stretch of coast used to have the best sea angling in western Europe. Seven different types of whale and dolphin breed in the bay. Carrowmore Lake is the supplier of water for this region and is protected as a Natura 2000 site on the UN list of protected conservation areas. It will be badly damaged. Shell were told all of this. So was the Government.”
Our discussion turned to the bog through which the pipe is being laid. In some parts the bog is 30 feet deep. Below that is the dóib.
Dóib is an Irish word for the material which lies below the bog. It causes the bog to move. Micheál told us of a neighbour's experience when he built a septic tank. The dóib lifted the tank. Another neighbour had a similar experience with the foundations for a hayshed. According to local people, sections of the pipe are sinking in the bog.
“That's why the Shell to Sea campaign can work. Shell have the technical know-how and technological resources to process all the gas and oil out at sea where its no danger to anyone. That's what they should have done from the beginning.”
At this point the prison officers told us that we had five minutes left on our visit. I asked Micheál had he any statement he wanted to make? I wrote down what he said along with my notes of our conversation.
The main points are as follows. “We have no choice. All normal people protect themselves, their families and their communities. We are being kept here by Shell. They are the only ones who can lift the injunction. We cannot agree not to protect our families and our communities. We cannot agree to anything which will make us less than citizens. We want to thank everyone who supports us.”
At that point the heavy door swung open and the prison warders arrived to take Michaél back to his cell. They treated him respectfully and as the door clanged closed behind him I watched him going down the prison corridor flanked by two large escorts.
I was deeply impressed by Micheál's demeanor and his commitment to this cause. As we made our way out of Cloverhill through the security, past the other visitors, mostly women, many of them with young children, and obviously urban working class, I reflected on how people end up in prison. I thought of the small, quietly-spoken, scholarly gaelgeoir from Mayo. I thought of Michaél and his comrades learning about the urban working class poor and worrying about the problems of drug abuse while standing up for the rights of a small rural community. It could be unless the government intervenes in a positive and decisive way to resolve the issues which are the cause of this dispute, that there will be many more people from west Mayo incarcerated at the whim of a multi-national.
Last week public pressure moved the Government and Shell. The Rossport Five were released.
But the campaign continues. There are big issues involved here.
Issues about citizens' rights, as opposed to the entitlements of powerful multi-national corporations.
There is also the issue of the ownership of our national resources.
In this case the Government gave away these resources. The people of Mayo will not benefit. The people of this State will not benefit. In fact, we will have to pay Shell for gas and oil. And the Corrib gas field is only the tip of this particular rip off. Since the 1970s, 185 wells were dug around our coastline. They are all in Irish waters. There were traces of oil and gas in almost every one. When the time comes to develop them who will benefit? Shell or the people of Ireland? Michaél Ó Seighin knows where he stands on that issue. He made that clear on our visit. The rest of us should be just as clear.π