The report given to Castlebar Town Council strongly suggests that the Gardai have reduced the number of robberies, criminal damage, public order offences, etc. They mention patrols targeting drinking spots – under the bridge, Lough Lannagh, etc. and taking drink from minors and effecting a big reduction in the incidence of public drunkenness as a result. Hopefully, they will manage to keep up the pressure and with monitoring of the CCTV cameras coming on stream this will help to improve the situation even further. Now if they can prevent people stealing all those letters from Castlebar shop fronts w  w ll all b  h ppy!

Kiltane locals are prepared to stand in front of bulldozers to stop work on the rehabilitation of bogs in Erris. The company claims that the work is necessary to revegetate the bogs but angered locals say that the flooded bogs are a death trap and loss of life is inevitable is something is not done. "We’re worried about the safety aspect. We can see loss of life, people could easily go off the main Ballina Belmullet road and find themselves in the water," noted one local, who is ready to stand in front of the bulldozers and halt the work. Locals say that they feel they have been "walked upon" with little consultation from Bord Na Mona but the company argues otherwise and noted that locals are exaggerating the situation.

Bogs are wet places. They are supposed to be wet just as much as deserts are supposed to be dry. There are thousands of acres of bog in North Mayo. So is North Mayo a death trap? I don’t think so. The existing tailings ponds for trapping peat silt with their "deep water" warning signs have been there for years. Nobody complained about them. Bord na Mona have willy nilly destroyed the natural bogs of North Mayo over the past number of decades. They did give jobs but even then, how many local people actually worked in the Bellacorick power station for example? Workers at Bellacorick commute from Achill, from Sligo from all over. Where would you spend your money if you worked in Bellacorick and lived in Achill? Bangor?

The power station reputedly has to import huge amounts of peat from other bogs in drier parts of the country, simply because the number of days required to dry milled peat are rarely achieved in North Mayo. It rains pretty much two out of every three days and there are many years when the bog doesn’t dry at all.

Rather than getting vexed about the end of an inefficient fossil fuel-based industry, the locals should see the revegetation of the bogs as a huge opportunity to support a sustainable tourism industry in the region. The salmon that run up the Owenmore River have had to contend with an unnaturally silted environment for years - silt from peat milling. Peat silt affects fish just as the locals have to deal with windblown peat silt piling up on their windowsills and getting into their lungs – only during the dry spells when wind can lift it up, of course. The runs of fish are pretty good as it stands but the number of salmon will increase once the silt stops and conditions in the rivers and lakes improve. Proper intact flooded bogs will also help to maintain the environment for salmon and trout and a range of other wildlife and protecting them against the ravages of climate change.

People will want to come and fish in North Mayo. During the week I heard the kidney dialysis cancer patient from Scotland whose dying wish effectively was to fish brown trout in Ireland. He was devastated when he found that he could not get local dialysis in Cavan but luckily Joe Duffy fixed it for him and organised transport and kidney dialysis. To fish in Ireland, to fish real wild fish in a great wilderness environment – if you are not into fishing you may not understand why this should be the object of a dying man’s desire. But believe me the attraction of a tight line on a river or lake surrounded by North Mayo’s bogs is something potent. North Mayo is sitting on a goldmine but they don’t know it up there. They just see a former carbon cash crop lying idle and now being flooded. Wake up North Mayo and look at what you have around you in a new light!

I would love to see the Western Rail Corridor open – even a little bit of it. But it’s one thing for a working group to make a recommendation and it’s another for the government to actually stump up the necessary cash. Cars are in. Railways are going out of style. Roads are in. Anything that might reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and reduce congestion on our roads is quite distinctly out at the moment. George W Bush the other week proposed to withdraw every last penny of funding for Amtrak, the US train service. But GW don’t travel by train - he have Airforce One. Likewise it’s a long time since any of our own politicians travelled by train or bus or public transport of any sort – although I think Enda Kenny does use the train on occasion. The passing of the Kyoto agreement this week – finally – seems to have heralded a lot of new reports on the reality of climate change. The predictions that would have been laughed at just a few years back and poo-pooed by the fossil-fuel carbon addicts are now appearing in the most reputable scientific journals. They are quite frightening and perhaps even more so in the wake of the Asian Tsunami in that it has engendered a new appreciation of the forces of nature. But travel by train? You must be joking! Unfortunately it will only be when the taxpayer is forking out the daily fines for failure to achieve the targets set by Kyoto that the reality of the mess our politicians have landed us in will be truly appreciated. And of course the Kyoto targets do not come anywhere near enough to stop runaway greenhouse gas global warming. We’re fooling ourselves folks on a whole series of different levels.

For sure finding a new source of fossil fuel off the West Coast will be welcomed by all of us carbon addicts. It may reduce our carbon dioxide output slightly vis a vis oil or coal and methane (natural gas) certainly burns cleaner than many other fuels. It won’t solve our greenhouse gas problem though. It will merely prolong the agony adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.