Harrington’s hunger strike continues

Harrington vows to continue ‘to the death’ if necessary


HUNGER STRIKE
Áine Ryan


LONG-TIME anti-Corrib gas activist, Maura Harrington, was due to officially retire from her position as Principal of Inver National School yesterday, Monday. It was also her 55th birthday. Instead, last night, she spent her seventh night on hunger strike in her locked car at Glengad, the site of the landfall for the controversial project.
Speaking to The Mayo News, she reiterated her demands that the Master of the Solitaire, Mr Simon van der Plicht, formally announce that the ship  has left Irish territorial waters or she will continue her hunger strike to the death.
“My resolve is as strong as it was at the outset. Our politicians have stood by and allowed our natural resources to be ripped off by billions of euro,” said Ms Harrington.
She observed that she was ‘neither an agitator nor a loony’ and that her decision to go on hunger strike to the death, if necessary, was ‘not undertaken lightly’.
Her dramatic actions were from ‘a deep sense of commitment to place and country’, she said.
Maura Harrington confirmed that she was receiving regular visits from a doctor but declined to comment on whether local priests had visited her in efforts to dissuade her from continuing her dramatic actions. 
In a letter delivered to the Solitaire on August 17 last, Ms Harrington had cited her terms and also noted that she weighed under seven stone and had calcified Tubercolosis.  
It isn’t the first time Maura Harrington was involved in a stand-off with Shell at Glengad. She may have not have been known outside north Mayo eight years ago, but on July 4, 2002, she spent a night sitting in the bucket of a digger to obstruct works on the beleaguered project.
Maura Harrington was born and bred in nearby Dohooma. Her first appointment on July 1, 1973, was to Inver School, which overlooks Broadhaven Bay. She is married to Naoise Ó Mongáin, an auditor, who has also been actively involved in the protest.
While she categorically declined to comment on her family’s feelings or consent about her protest, she alluded to her 20-year-old son, Iollan Ó Mongáin’s arrest on Saturday last. He was among a group of four protesters arrested at Glengad beach.