Use Ireland's natural resources for our people

I was listening to Neil Prendeville on the Opinion Line programme on 96FM radio last Friday in relation to the so-called An Bord Snip Nua and felt it was time to talk about Ireland's natural resources. In the major parties in Ireland there would only seem to be differences in the level of cuts they would impose in government and even the Labour Party now accept cuts in public service numbers. Eamon Gilmore even said that the slashing of 17,000 jobs was "doable". Let you go first Eamon.

The Workers' Party does not share this view and we believe that there is an alternative. There is a consensus among the Irish political elite, big business and economists (who are invariably right wing) that the unrestrained market economy is a sacred cow which cannot be challenged and while it can go wrong sometimes it is effectively infallible. I disagree. Even within countries that hold by the market economy system there are different ways of doing things.

For one moment just consider the two words "Public Service" - what is so wrong about it? That its executives and terms of references are dictated by Fianna Fáil and previously Fine Gael governments may be one problem. That it is top heavy with bureaucrats (appointed by the same parties) may be another. The fact that it is constantly stopped from competing with the private sector by rules which favour private enterprise is certainly a problem. But why throw out the baby with the bathwater? Isn't essential that we have a public service?

The proposals in the Bord Snip report (what a mild name for such a viscious plan) are on the basis that Ireland is in economic crisis. Everyone would seem to agree, from Brian Cowen to even some in the trade union movement. But is Ireland in economic crisis? No it is not. It is the economic system imposed on this country which is in crisis.

Ireland has massive wealth in our seas in the form of fish and under our seas in the form of oil and gas. We have mineral wealth under our mountains and under our bogs and we have wealth in the form of our people who are intelligent and willing to work. They have proved this in every corner of the world.

I just want to briefly outline some of that wealth:-

Official government figures from just last year (2008) estimate that at least 10 Billion barrels of oil lie off the west coast of Ireland and that there is a potential of up to 130 Billion barrels of oil and up to 50 Trillion cubic feet of gas there. The Dunquin Field, around 200km off the coast of Kerry and inside Ireland's territorial seas is estimated at having around 4,130 million barrels of oil and up to 25 trillion cubic feet of gas. According to government figures this find on its own would more than meet Ireland's domestic oil and gas needs for the next 62 years. The Dunquin field is being developed by the giant US oil and gas corporation Exxon Mobil (in its previous incarnation responsible for the world's worst environmental disaster with the Exxon Valdez which went ashore off the coast of Alaska in 1989, spilling over 40 million litres (10 milion gallons) of crude oil into the sea devastating the coast and wiping out vast numbers of fish, seals, otters and birds). Should such a company be trusted to harvest our oil and gas and take it away for practically nothing?














Above: Map of Ireland's oil & gas fields

There are also huge deposits of gas off the coast of County Clare and there are proven oil and gas reserves under the Bog of Allen in the north midlands. Ireland also has massive mineral wealth in the form of zinc, lead, gold and other minerals.

Then there is the Corrib Gas Field. I am now addressing primarily the economic aspects as my support of the Shell to Sea campaign is well known. The economic argument is clear - the cost of meeting the concerns of the local people is minimal when compared to the massive value of this resource. The local people of the Erris peninsula have real and justified concerns and want the gas refined at sea (just like the Old Head of Kinsale gas field off Cork is). The cost of doing that seems big at €300 million but this pales into insignificance when compared to the value of the gas, estimated at up to €140 Billion. A mere 2% of this would solve the problem tomorrow if the refinery were just built offshore.

The trouble with all of this is that we are giving away our gas for nothing. The state charges no royalties whatsoever for giving OUR gas to Shell, Marathon or the Norwegian state oil and gas company Statoil which are developing the field. It charges a mere 25% tax. This is the equivalent of a developer giving away houses for free and then charging a small fee for handing over the key. Norway is a country with more or less the same population as the Republic of Ireland (4.8 milllion people to our 4.4 million). Norway is not a socialist country or a communist country but it has its own state oil and gas company. Why can Norway do it and not Ireland? Norway's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2008 was $456 Billion, Ireland's was $218 Billion (less than half).

This country has the capacity to be extremely wealthy and to provide for all the needs of our people - to give us a first class free health service and to provide for the education of our children and young people. Why is this massive wealth not put to the benefit of the Irish people? Why is it that we are importing potatoes and vegetables into this country when we all grew up being told that this was an agricultural country?

The Workers' Party is not against the creation of wealth. We are against giving away our people's wealth and our children's birthright for nothing in return and we are against Ireland, a sovereign country, being told how to run our economy, whether it is by the European Union or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Our people have been robbed by shady deals done between corrupt politicians, speculators, bankers and bureaucrats. The deal done by Ray Burke as Minister for Industry and Commerce when eh signed the contract to agreement to give away the Corrib Gas field to Shell and its cohorts was a crime against the people of this country. This was a corrupt deal done by a man subsequently convicted and jailed for another corrupt act. It was theft on a grand scale from the Irish people and we should not honour such a deal.

This country does not need An Bord Snip or Thatcherite economists like Dr. Colm McCarthy or Peter Bacon to tell us to cut our public services and further decimate our hospitals and schools and to consign another generation of our young people to emigration and poverty. What we need is to take ownership and control of our own natural resources and our economy and put them to work on behalf of the people. This may sound like utopianism and will be portrayed as out of date socialism but in fact it is plain common sense. The United States of America doesn't give away its oil and gas for free, the UK doesn't give away its North Sea Gas and countries like Norway most certainly don't do it. So why should we?

Scrap Bord Snip, defend the public service and stand up for what is ours.

Eight week council break unnacceptable

Tomorrow's meeting of Cork City Council (13th July) will be its last for eight weeks until it reconvenes on Monday, 14th September, just 2 days before the Dáil returns from its 9 week break.

This is simply not acceptable, particularly at a time when the council is experiencing serious cuts in its budget and a shortfall of at least €2 million in its budget and possibly a much greater shortfall next year. Already 91 temporary and short term staff have been left go and there is a total embargo on recruitment. In addition to this there are threats of cuts in a wide range of council services.

Despite this, tomorrow's City Council meeting will be proposing to send a number of councillors to conferences around the country and in my view and that of the Workers Party this is totally unacceptable and I will be opposing this. It is not justified when the council cannot respond adequately to the demand for services such as housing maintenance. I would also question the value of most, if not all of these conferences.

In addition to this, I have proposed a motion opposing the closure of St. Mary's Road Library in Gurranabraher and the City Council's plan to move the library to a rented premises in Blackpool Shopping Centre. The current premises is owned by the City Council; the proposed one will incur rent in the region of €100,000 payable to one of Cork's wealthiest businessmen, an individual who within the last year was forced to pay over €1.4 million to the Revenue Commissioners arising out of the inquiry into the Ansbacher Accounts tax evasion scam. Is it right that the City Council should pay half a million Euro to this man over the lifetime of this council when it is suffering its greatest financial crisis ever? I think not.

I also have tabled a motion calling for the provision of street nameplates at Silversprings Lawn and Silversprings Court which do not have nameplates despite having being built almost 30 years ago.

Another motion which I am hoping will come up is calling on the City Council to make boarded up corporation houses ready and available for allocation to people on the council's waiting list. It is totally unacceptable that at a time when there are 5,000 people on the City Council's housing waiting list that we have hundreds of houses and flats boarded up. Not only are these houses and flats unsightly but they attract anti-social elements into an area and illegal dumping. This is an issue that I along with my Workers Party fellow candidates Jackie Connolly and Mick Crowley raised during last month's local elections and we intend to follow through on the matter as a matter of urgency.

One motion I have proposed is sure to cause controversy and I make no apologies for that. It is a call for an inquiry into the Corrib Gas Project. Although this is far away in County Mayo it does have relevance to the people of Cork because the Irish taxpayers are being denied billions of Euro of revenue as a result of a dirty deal done by the former Fianna Fáil government minister Ray Burke with the Shell Oil corporation (Anglo Dutch Shell) and other oil and gas companies to pump gas ashore and refine it at Bellanaboy in Co. Mayo. The state, on behalf of the Irish people, should have got billions of Euro for this gas but instead it was practically given away to Shell and the company have been allowed bring it ashore via a very high pressure gas pipeline which pumps gas at an extraordinarly high pressure of 345 Bar (compared to a maximum of 70 Bar at Kinsale Head gasfield) across boggy land in an area where there have been several major landslides over the past decade.

Shell have been facilitated in this by the granting of a compulsory purchase order allowing them to put their pipeline through the property of local families (mostly small farmers and fishermen) and dangerously close to many of their homes. This small community has opposed the pipeline out of genuine concern for the safety of themselves and their families. They have used non-violent resistance to try and prevent the destruction of their beaches, bogs and farms. Despite being a designated area of special environmental interest, the project is being forced through with the help of up to 300 gardaí, the Irish Navy and up to 160 private security personnel. There is a serious question mark hanging over the largest of these private security companies arising from an incident in which two of its employees, both of whom had been employed at the Corrib Gas site, were shot dead in Bolivia and were accused by the government of that country of being involved in an attempted Coup d'etat. While the book is still open on that case, there are very serious questions arising from it which link directly to Corrib and the type of people being recruited for security duty by Shell's protectors.

Five local men from the Rossport were jailed for 90 days and many others have been arrested. There are so many incidents related to this debacle that it would take up too much space here to relate but you can read much more on the Shell to Sea website at www.shelltosea.com or on Indymedia www.indymedia.ie


Finally, while the City Council may not be meeting until September 14th, I will continue to be available to consitutents and anyone who may wish to raise an issue of concern with me. As always I can be contacted on my mobile (086) 190 8281 or by e-mail at tedtynan@gmail.com