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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

New twist in Corrib saga as 800m of ducting is found floating in Atlantic

By: 
Keith Bourke & Orla Hearns - Western People

LONG-TIME Shell to Sea campaigner Maura Harrington has described the incident whereby plastic ducting associated with the long-running Corrib gas  project was found floating in Broadhaven Bay last Friday as "farcical".

Shell E& P Ireland Ltd – the developers of the Corrib gas pipeline and terminal at Bellanaboy -– has stressed that there is no evidence to suggest that the ducting was broken or damaged in any way. The ducting is used to discharge treated surface water from the Bellanaboy terminal in accordance with its licence from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)) "This has no impact on the gas pipeline. That is completely separate," the spokesperson stressed.

An 800m long section of the ducting, which in its totality extends some 10-12 miles out to open sea, appears to have become dislodged from the sea bed where it had been anchored in place with boulders since 2009. It is thought that recent stormy weather may have resulted in this section rising from the sea bed.

Posted Date: 
19 March 2015
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