Minister Hogan challenged about latest Corrib consent

Hogan challenged about Corrib consent


Áine Ryan

ONE of the last consents for the controversial Corrib gas project, a Foreshore License, has been issued by the recently-appointed Fine Gael Minister for the Environment, Phil Hogan. Subject to a number of conditions, the Foreshore License will allow Shell to construct the final 8km section of the pipeline, which will link the gas field to the onshore refinery at Bellanaboy.
This section, which involves the construction of one of the longest tunnels for raw gas in western Europe, will cross under Sruwaddacon Bay, a Special Area of Conservation, and pass near Dooncarton hill, the site of catastrophic landslides in 2004. 
The permission was granted as An Taisce and local residents, Monica Muller and Peter Sweetman, mount legal challenges to the recent An Bord PleanΡla decision to approve the pipeline route, announced during January. An Taisce Chairman, Charles Stanley Smith told The Irish Times last week, that the national trust was ‘unhappy that such a decision had been made before the judicial process has been completed’. However, he also confirmed the decision ‘does not affect the case’.
Shell welcomed the decision noting that at peak production the Corrib gas will supply up to 60 per cent of Ireland’s natural gas supply.
In a statement on Friday last, a company spokeswoman said: “Shell E&P Ireland (SEPIL) welcomes today’s granting of a Foreshore License by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. With five wells at the Corrib Filed and the offshore pipeline in place, and the terminal at Bellanaboy also close to completion, the Corrib Gas Partners are looking forward to completing the onshore pipeline, which is the final phase of the development.”
However, spokesman for community group, Pobal Chill ChomΡin, John Monaghan said the group was disappointed that ‘a Minister barely in office approves work that is currently being challenged in the courts’. He also observed that hundreds of residents in Kilcommon parish had called for an oral hearing into this license, which is allowed under foreshore legislation but has now been denied them.
Minister Hogan said the decision had given consideration to submissions made during public consultation, from prescribed bodies, on the advice of his department and on the recommendations of the Marine License Vetting Committee.
Meanwhile, 20 Opposition TDs gathered outside the DΡil last week to support a call by Shell to Sea to overturn the eleventh-hour granting of a key consent for Corrib by outgoing Minister Pat Carey on the day of the General Election. However, Labour’s Minister of the Environment, Pat Rabbitte, said the consents were valid and therefore ‘the issue of revocation does not arise”.
In another development, environmental campaigners from all over the country called on Government to ratify the Aarhus Convention at the weekend, which former Green Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, had pledged to do. 
At the first All-Ireland Community Campaigns Gathering, held in Dublin, it was claimed that communities such as those living in Rossport would have been spared a decade of distress if the United Nations convention had been transposed into law.
“Instead of signing international conventions, such as Aarhus, the Irish Government is busy signing licenses to allow private corporations impose dangerous projects on communities,” said Mamie Bowen of the Cork Harbour Alliance for a Safe Environment. 
Adopted in the Danish city of Aarhus in 1998, this convention links environmental rights with human rights and makes governments accountable for the environment. It demands that all stakeholders – including the public – have rights to accountability, transparency and access to information about projects in their areas.