`We are not Asahi Mark 2. We are concerned about the environment, and we are here to stay." The words of Mr Brian O Cathain, managing director of Enterprise Energy Ireland, which is responsible for a £600 million gas project off the Mayo coast.
The company is satisfied that all environmental concerns relating to the Mayo landfall, including a report by Dr Alex Rogers of Southampton University, commissioned by a local shellfish company, will be addressed during the planning and foreshore licence applications.
"The Environmental Impact Statements we have prepared in line with European legislation have to take into account a worst-case scenario," Mr O Cathain told The Irish Times.
"That's why it may have been misinterpreted locally. I think sometimes people think we are just all big, bad multinationals, but we've all got kids and we are just as concerned about the landscape."
Mr O Cathain is a father of two from Whiteabbey, Belfast, whose fluent Irish has helped on doorsteps and in public meetings in north Mayo. Educated at St Malachy's College, he spent summers in the Donegal Gaeltacht and studied geology at Bristol University.
His elevation to managing director last summer, in succession to Mr John McGoldrick, came at a crucial time for Enterprise, with reports that latest tests in the Corrib area were showing potential. One of his first public assignments was to address the Humbert Summer School in Ballina, where he predicted that the gas field could provide up to half of Ireland's requirements, and that the project could be a fillip for local development.
Just over a month ago the field was declared commercial, but the project has not yet been sanctioned by Enterprise and its partners, Statoil Exploration and Marathon International Petroleum. Mr O Cathain plays down the significance of this, saying: "We hope to declare that we are going ahead in the very near future."
While progress offshore has been keenly followed by the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Mr Fahey, the onshore end of the project is proving controversial. Mr O Cathain says the queries raised by Mayo County Council in relation to the initial planning application are being taken very seriously and a reply has been prepared. It will not delay the project unduly, he says.
The pipeline route is also proving contentious. "Sixty parcels of land are affected, owned by 45 land-owners, but the majority are supportive. The objectors want us to take the pipeline through bog commonage, rather than through their land.
"The problem is that Duchas doesn't want us going through the commonage, where there are turbary rights, or through virgin blanket bog which is part of a Special Area of Conservation (SAC). And we can't go through the estuary as that is also protected," Mr O Cathain said.
On opposition to the terminal construction, he says some of the concerns are misplaced. "The last thing we want to do is to put any pollutants into the bay, and the emissions from the factory are similar to those you'd get from a gas central heater in your house: 99 per cent of it will be carbon-dioxide and water. It will be a lot less polluting than Bellacorick power station, and will be subject to Environmental Protection Agency criteria.
"We honestly feel we can't have consulted more. We aren't going away. We are going to be there for the next 20 years. We want to be seen to be a good part of the community, like Coca-Cola in Ballina, employing 50 as operators at the plant, and additional staff for services like catering."
Initially, experienced staff will be "imported" to run the terminal on a temporary basis, but "within two to three years, 90 per cent of the staff will have been recruited locally."
On the issue of employing Irish offshore staff during the exploration phase, which was the subject of criticism by SIPTU, he says the company could not discriminate on grounds of nationality. Killybegs has become its supply base, handling 75 per cent of its boat movements, and its "air transport base" is Carrickfin, Co Donegal.
Mr O Cathain says the nature of the industry now is such that crews stay with rigs as they roam the world. The company is expecting a giant rig in March, currently working for Shell in Egypt, to drill further wells on the Errigal prospect off the Donegal coast. "There are no low-skill jobs on rigs like that any more. It is a very high-tech industry now, with high safety standards, and you can't just take people on for summer work."
Two years ago a report by consultants Wood MacKenzie claimed that there could be as much as five trillion cubic feet of gas lying in structures around the Corrib field, and said that the area was geologically quite simple and could prove very productive and cheap to develop.
Both SIPTU and the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association have called on the Government to review its benign fiscal terms for the industry, given the potential ahead.
However, Mr O Cathain claims that Corrib is not an indication of a "bonanza" in Irish waters. He doesn't believe Ireland's tax regime for oil and gas exploration is too generous.