Brendan Kenneally (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and the opportunity to speak on this issue. When we look back on the imprisonment on those who have become known as the Rossport five we will view the matter with regret. It should not be necessary for five citizens of the State to go to prison for 94 days to vindicate what they perceive to be their rights. Regardless of the sequence of events and the legal niceties responsible for their three month stay in an Irish prison, it should not have happened here in this enlightened third millennium.

The five Mayo men whose names have become familiar during one of the finest summers in recent memory were most unlikely prisoners. Had they not been cast into a controversy to which they became central, a controversy not of their own making, they would have spent a quiet summer with their families rather that making headlines in the national and local media. I am pleased the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Noel Dempsey, was finally able to facilitate the process which led to the five men regaining their freedom. I urge all sides to engage actively and realistically in the mediation process which he has arranged. It is unfortunate it took so long to bring it about but balancing the legal and political process is often not an easy task. The seeds of a permanent solution have been sown by the Minister and will bear fruit in the long term. In the meantime we must acknowledge the courageous and principled stand the five men took, the hardship it brought to them and their families and the effect it will have on all of them for some time to come.

This is a classic case of the objectives of two sections of the community coming into direct conflict with each other. It was regrettable that five citizens of this State found themselves in prison for the manner in which they attempted to defend their rights and to ensure the safety of the community which they believed to be at risk from Shell's proposals to bring gas ashore in County Mayo.

A large question mark hangs over the proposals by the oil company for this gas pipeline. I am not a technical expert or an expert on the piping of gas or petrochemicals around the country. I do not even know if this proposal affects the gas network which operates under the streets of our cities and the wider countryside as it brings energy to our towns and cities. Oil companies are in the business of making money and are powerful entities that can exercise huge influence on a worldwide scale. It came as no surprise that the company at the centre of this controversy petitioned the courts for the men's imprisonment and allowed them to sit in their cells for 94 days before acceding to the Minister's proposal. In the meantime it proceeded with work for which it had not obtained permission. I applaud the Minister for making that point to the company and requiring it to dismantle that section of the pipeline.

Since the arrival of the Celtic tiger a culture has developed in this country which is not unfriendly to powerful multinationals whereby wearing a high visibility vest confers a special permission to stop traffic, encroach on private property and generally ignore the rights and comforts of anyone who will stand in the way of generating personal wealth. In the wider context the welfare of the individual, the good of a rural or even the international community is of little consequence to companies of the size, wealth and influence of those in the oil industry. Several times over the past three decades the suggestion has been made that we should be grateful they came to our shores to spend large fortunes looking for oil and gas. Some would have us believe they do it for the Irish people but we should be more realistic and realise that balance sheets, work deadlines and full pipelines are all that matter to such concerns. We should judge the present proposals in Mayo and the problems they have caused against this background. We must judge the reasons the company finally succumbed to pressure, and availed of the opportunity presented by the Minister to bring the crisis to an end, in the context of those principles.

We can talk about principles and principled stands all day and discuss the relative claims for the safety of the installation and the power of multinational companies but who would favour a gas pipeline pumping unknown quantities of explosive material at unknown explosive pressure not much more than 100 yards from people's homes? This was not just a blind protest on the part of disgruntled residents. Their arguments were logical. I cannot confirm that they were correct but they did raise reasonable doubts about safety and the appropriateness of the industry being there at all, such as the inadequacy of the soil through which the pipeline will run and several other arguments worth investigating.

Technical people, particularly those with a vested interest, do not always have the answers. These families and the wider community in Mayo were presented with a situation not one of us would like to be in. Hard information on the project was difficult to come by and guarantees that were given were looked at askance in light of the record of the petrochemical industry. The company also defied the directions of the Minister, an action not likely to garner support for its proposals.

The record of oil companies across the world is dismal and, leaving aside wider claims from the extreme left, enough independent news bulletins have been seen over the years to enable people be aware of some of the less acceptable practices employed by them. These include the absence of proper safety systems, the exploitation of local labour and the lack of concern for the environment and communities in which they operate. In Ireland in 2005 we should be able to resist the practices imposed in Third World countries.

As a regular user of a motor car, natural gas central heating and oil-generated electricity, I am realistic in accepting that we must explore, exploit and distribute fuels in order to survive in the modern world. Such fuels are required to generate the wealth which improves the lot of the country's population. Nevertheless, we should wonder why this gas, which everyone recognises as a dangerous substance, is required to be piped so far inland to be processed. It is legitimately suggested that for a relatively tiny fraction of the budget of a development of this magnitude, the gas could be processed offshore and brought inland in a safer form. This need not affect the employment potential of the project.

I am not familiar with the entire process, but with the amount of information the company appears to be making available, not many people understand it either. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that these five men took their stand, claiming that from their research the proposal was unsafe and offered little to the people of Mayo as it stood. I accept that the mediation process as proposed by the Minister will and should be independent, but I urge that every facility be made available and every encouragement be given to expediting the process. Too much time has already elapsed, and the five families, along with the people of Mayo generally, have the right to have their fears and anxieties allayed at the earliest opportunity.

If there is any benefit to be gleaned from this issue, and there must be a positive thought everywhere, it is that it should be used as a lesson for the future. All dangerous and contentious proposals must be properly and minutely vetted, so that people are neither exposed to risk nor have a perception that they are. We must have full disclosure on what is proposed, regardless of whether a powerful multinational is involved. We must be strong and independent to ensure that our national wishes and aspirations are met in full. I wish the Minister, Deputy Noel Dempsey, well in his mediation efforts and I hope that the matter comes to a speedy resolution, with some compromise being reached to satisfy as many people as possible.