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Alternative planned to State’s commemoration of 1916 Rising

By: 
Marie Halloran - Irish Times

Quoting from the Proclamation “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland”, Mr Ballagh asked “how stands that right with the sale of Corrib gas for a pittance to an international company”.

Preparations are underway for major centenary events as an alternative to the State’s plans to commemorate the 1916 Rising.

The separate proposals include a major parade and pageant on April 24th, 2016, the actual centenary of the 1916 Easter Monday Rising, which will involve actors including Stephen Rea, Fionnuala Flanagan and Adrian Dunbar and singer Sinéad O’Connor.

Artist Robert Ballagh, one of the organisers of the initiative “Reclaim the Vision of 1916”, said events would also include a National Graves re-dedication of the 1916 burial plot at Glasnevin cemetery.

Asked if there had been any contact with State authorities, the artist said “we are letting the State do their thing”. Mr Ballagh added: “I don’t think the State will be giving space to those who feel the vision of the Proclamation hasn’t been achieved.”

Posted Date: 
4 May 2015

Gardaí punched man in face and head at Corrib protest, jury hears

By: 
Mary Carolan - Irish Times

Two officers involved are ‘accomplished’ boxers, High Court told

A garda, described as an “accomplished boxer”, punched a man in the face during a protest over the Shell Corrib gas field in Co Mayo, a High Court jury has been told.

The garda’s father, also garda and a boxer, then punched him in the head, the jury heard.

There was Garda “indiscipline, brutality and excessive force” during the protest and unprovoked assaults were perpetrated on three local men by gardaí, counsel for the three said.

There was an “unexplained” and “mysterious” gap in a Garda video recording of the protest, Micheál P. O’Higgins SC added.

He was opening separate civil actions by Patrick Coyle, a farmer, Barnatra, Ballina, and brothers Patrick O’Donnell and Martin O’Donnell,Shore, Porturlin, Ballina, both fishermen, over the alleged assaults.

The three cases are being heard together before Mr Justice Paul McDermott and a jury and are listed for five days.

Posted Date: 
29 April 2015

RTE failed to truthfully inform the public on Corrib

By: 
Shell to Sea

News Release - Issued by Shell to Sea - April 12th, 2015 - For immediate release

-- Shell to Sea send submission on RTE's Public Service Statement --

Shell to Sea have today sent in a submission to RTE as part of RTE's public consultation on the updating of their Public Service Statement [1]. In the submission, Shell to Sea claimed that RTE had failed to inform the public in an honest and balanced manner on the Corrib Gas project.

Posted Date: 
12 April 2015

Good Friday Walk

On Good Friday (3rd April) the annual Good Friday walk will take place at 12 noon, from Glengad to Aughoose.

All welcome

Date: 
3 April 2015 - 12:00pm

Community campaigner reflects on Corrib controversy

By: 
Áine Ryan - Mayo News

Retired teacher, Micheál Ó Seighin was reluctantly forced into the public spotlight when he was jailed in 2005 over flouting an injunction facilitating Shell’s development of the Corrib Gas project. Here he speaks exclusively to Áine Ryan as the gas is about to come on-stream.

AR It is almost 20 years since the Corrib Field was discovered in 1996. Can you bring us back to those early years and how you became involved in the debacle?
MOS I know now, as the rig workers did at the time, that the gas field to be called Corrib was well worth developing and would make money. My first introduction to it was an article by Mike Cunningham in the Western People in 1998 pointing out the potential for County Mayo in this new source of development a potential never to be realised.  At that stage Broadhaven Bay or its environs or other areas of European designation did not figure in the proposed development and I saw no significance in the moves by Coillte in the summer of 1999 to get legal title to its lands at Ballinaboy, the project’s refinery site. Nor, in 2000, was I aware of the flood of minor legislation passing through the Dáil to facilitate this project specifically.
In the early summer of 2000 and then in early autumn the ‘suits’ crowded into the area with models and scenarios and promising ‘goodies and pie in the sky’, buying pints etc. The Catholic Bishop of Kilalla and our local parish priest were charging around like harbingers of the Day of (good) Judgement; obviously we would never see a poor day again; but I personally was very aware of the limited short-time benefit accruing to any community from the extraction of raw materials. Still I was not concerned as I expected a project like that of Kinsale gas but my attitude changed when the [original] developer (Enterprise Oil) applied for planning permission in November 2000 and I saw what they intended to do to us, effectively to launch a heavy metals assault on us from land sea and air. That is how and why I became involved in objecting for the first time in my life.

Posted Date: 
25 March 2015
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