July 2012

Shell’s giant tunnel boring machine was expected to remain overnight on the back of a lorry that jack-knifed at an isolated Co Mayo crossroads early this morning despite efforts by large tow-trucks to move it this evening.

A jack-knifed truck containing tunnel boring machinery which got stuck on its way to the Shell Bellanaboy Gas refinery in Co Mayo today.Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire

The lorry was part of a large convoy, flanked by garda vans and outriders, as well as other security personnel, that left Dublin Port on Sunday night, transporting sections of the boring machine.

Local residents from the nearby villages of Rossport and Carrowteigue were unable to travel to work or make hospital appointments due to the incident, which blocked a junction on the L1203 and R312 roads, at Glenamoy crossroads from early this morning.

The last twelve plus hours saw protesters in Erris take on one of the largest Gardai operations Ireland has seen in some time – and ran rings around it. The mammoth operation saw hundreds of Gardai and IRMS security trying to escort the tunnel boring machine [TBM] to Aghoos. Yet Shell to Sea campaigners managed, in separate incidents, two lock-ons and used a car to blockade a bridge on the route of the TBM.

There was a tense stand-off between protesters and gardaí today as a machine to tunnel under a picturesque bay was brought in by contractors for Shell.

Scuffles broke out as a huge Garda convoy escorted specialist tunnelling equipment as it travelled from Dublin to the Sruwaddacon Estuary in north Mayo.

Two protesters initially blocked the road on the outskirts of Ballina in the early hours of the morning during a “lock-on”, when they chained themselves to a drum filled with cement.