David Norris (Independent)

I support Senator Brian Hayes and those others who expressed their concern at the situation regarding the five Mayo farmers who have been jailed. There should be no criticism of the judge, who has simply implemented the law as he is required to do. However, the history of Shell certainly gives us a great deal about which to be concerned. I was one of several people in this House who raised concerns at the time that this deal was struck; we thought there was something very fishy about it. It was not in the interest of the people of the west of Ireland and was an extremely bad deal from a rapacious multinational company with an appalling environmental history.

As Senator Ryan said, one need only go toNigeria and ask the Ogoni people. We saw what happened to Ken Saro-Wiwa and how Shell drove pipelines over the Nigerian countryside, devastating it with complete disregard for all environmental concerns. Then it tried to buy its way out of it with a PR campaign, and we were foolish and gullible enough to accept that. We should support the farmers. One must remember that it is their land, and the Constitution recognises rights to property. Historically, the Government has been extremely reluctant to intervene using the public good criterion, yet this bullying multinational can do it.

The final matter I would like to raise is the question of blood transfusions. We are once again being told there is a quite critical difficulty in the blood supply. A constituent has written to me to say that the authorities refuse to take blood from gay people, an entire section of the population, because they suspect there is an increased risk of hepatitis, AIDS and so on, something that may or may not be true. In Britain, however, they do not have that prohibition but test the blood. It is therefore rather foolish of us to complain about a lack of blood resources, which are very necessary for operations and so on, yet reject a section of the population that might be prepared to volunteer such resources, simply because we do not apply the same systems they do on the neighbouring island.