Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

For the past two years, a small, isolated, part-Gaeltacht community in County Mayo has, on the authority of the Government, been bullied and harassed by major oil and gas companies in order to railroad it into accepting the running of pipelines that will contain raw, untreated gas at unprecedented pressure through their area and an industrial refinery in the heart of what is one of the most pristine and beautiful parts of the country.

The Government has put the Garda Síochána in the position of acting almost as a private army for the notorious Shell oil corporation, a company that has left a trail of environmental destruction around the world. The Garda has used totally unacceptable and heavy-handed tactics against the people of Erris. Let us scotch, once and for all, the spurious propaganda put abroad by some Government politicians and elements of the media that outsiders are going into Erris and causing trouble as if the local people were puppets on a string. The entire protest has been directed by members of the local community and is designed to protect the locality and its natural resources.

I wish to illustrate what the people of the area are being obliged to endure. On 16 October, when three other Independent Deputies and I held, in a totally peaceful context, a press conference and a meeting with local people at Bellanaboy, two members of the Garda with video cameras intruded upon it and filmed the proceedings in their entirety. We complained to the Garda Commissioner and the Minister for Justice Equality and Law Reform in respect of what must be an unprecedented action on the part of members of the Garda Síochána in intruding upon Members of the Oireachtas carrying out their representational functions, but we have not yet received a reply. If the Taoiseach was meeting a Fianna Fáil cumann in north Mayo, is he of the view that members of the Garda would barge in and make a video recording of proceedings as if he were a criminal? The verbal and physical abuse to which members of the community to which I refer have been subjected is reprehensible.

A number of Independent Deputies do not fully agree with all the demands of the people of Rossport. However, we all want justice for those people and their community. Deputy Cowley has staunchly represented the community when others turned away. In recent times, a new initiative has been undertaken by the Shell to Sea campaign, directed by the local community, in respect of bringing into being an independent public commission which would conduct public hearings and in respect of which community consent would be a fundamental criterion. Opinion polls carried out in Mayo and nationally indicate that a majority of the people support their counterparts in Erris in demanding that the Shell facility be placed offshore in order that the intrusion, pollution and danger it might cause can be avoided.

The initiative to which I refer has been dismissed with an arrogance that only the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources can summon. Will the Taoiseach accept the initiative and put into being a new process under which this issue might be resolved?

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