In Reply to: Free Corrib 5 with Every Pack posted by Mogli on June 29, 2005 at 23:24:59:

Over the past few weeks listening to the great Corrib pipe line debate again as the contractors start to go to work on it and mindful this week of the stand taken by these men
I was thinking this morning that a couple of weeks ago we had secretly captured video footage out of China where there were a number of farmers beaten and killed by thugs supposedly hired by the State and Oil companies in order to drive them off their own land that had been allocated for the construction of a big power station.
We hear similar stories from Nigeria and the fate of writer Ken Sara Wiwa who was framed for murder and executed by the state when he stood up to big oil companies.
We hear countless stories about the Native peoples of North and South America who have been cheated out of mineral rights on their lands and persecuted by the state when they take a stand.
And all these stores are presented in this country as gross abuses of basic human rights by oppressive regimes.
I had cause last week in a professional capacity to try to contact the Corrib Gas Pipeline Site office. I called 11811 who had nothing on it. I checked the Bord Gais website, nothing. I called a Bord Gais number and got thru to some guy in a Dublin office that was totally clueless and had never even heard of it and suggested calling the Galway office before cutting me off. While browsing their site however I just noticed the gas grid network in Ireland with the current pipelines running between Cork Dublin Galway and Dundalk and all the spurs along the way connecting up towns such as Ballinasloe and Ennis and Clonmel and Mullingar and Bandon and Enfield yet we're told by Bord Gais that Castlebar (which the pipeline will pass within 2 miles of the centre of) nor no town in Mayo warrants a Gas supply from the pipeline because it's size doesn't justify it.
Initially there was talk of an Gas Fired Power Station in Bellecorrig to replace the decommissioned peat fired on but that appears to have gone from the agenda so as far as I can see Mayo stands to benefit little from this bar the miniscule ground rents and disturbance money that those whose lands the pipeline passes thru will get.
The offshore work on the pipeline has been almost wholly serviced from ABERDEEN in Scotland so that no part of Ireland has gotten the benefit from it and there is little local benefit or employment being gained from the overland works.
So it seems like the government (local and national) are content to laizzez faire and pump this gas down thru Mayo and out of the county into the metropolis's without Mayo getting any of the benefits whatsoever, unlike the shrewd local councils in Scotland who's communities benefited hugely in infrastructural investment and leisure/welfare facilities when North Sea Gas was initially piped thru their communities in the 1970's.
It a strange ole world indeed. I'm sure there's a Bob Dylan or a Woodie Guthrie song that describes it perfectly. Something about build big gas terminals and they give you a medal, try to protect your fields and your livelihood and they lock you up in jail....
Oh and finally I almost forgot to mention about the fact that the mineral rights to this and practically all of Ireland's off shore reserves were signed over for a pittance by a criminal who just happened to be a Government minister at the time, one Raphael Burke, jail bird and disgraced corrupt politician.