March 2011

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria — Posters show smiling students posing after receiving university scholarships. New roads appear on formerly potholed mud tracts. Millions of dollars are promised to improve the lives of the desperate poor.

Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan has granted a foreshore licence to Shell E&P Ireland as one of its last outstanding consents for the Corrib gas project.

The license, which is subject to conditions, allows the lead developer to construct the final 8km section of high pressure gas pipeline linking the Corrib field off the Mayo coastline to the terminal built inland at Ballinaboy.

Planning approval has already been granted for the pipeline by An Bord Pleanála, and consents under the Gas and Petroleum Acts were issued by former acting energy minister Pat Carey on the day of the general election.

An Taisce has sought a judicial review of the Bord Pleanála decision, which is before the High Court next Tuesday (tues 29th).

An Taisce’s chairman Charles Stanley-Smith has said that the organisation is “unhappy that such a decision has been made before the judicial review process is completed”, but Mr Hogan’s approval “does not affect the case”.

ANALYSIS: Party members meet this weekend to discuss its direction, but with no TDs will it remain a political force?

TREVOR SARGENT likens the Green Party going into government in 2007 to the plot of Saving Private Ryan. 

“Except that our mission was to save the children of the country. We had to go in. We could not wait any longer. Future generations needed their interest put first.”

Madam, – Micheál Martin asserted that the Esat contract was “the most lucrative ever awarded by the State”.

I would suggest that the contract with Shell in Co Mayo is far more lucrative for Shell, and far less beneficial to Ireland. – Yours, etc,

SEAMUS O’MEAGAIR,

Belview Road,

Mullingar,

Co Westmeath.