SECURITY PROVIDED by the Garda Síochána for Shell EP Ireland’s Corrib gas project has cost the State €8.9 million to date,according to Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern.
The costs cover the period September 2006 to April 30th, 2008, Mr Ahern said in a written reply to a Dáil question tabled by Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh.
These costs include salaries and overtime for gardaí deployed in the north Mayo area since resumption of construction at the Corrib gas refinery in Bellanaboy in early October 2006. Construction is about 30 per cent complete, according to Shell EP Ireland.
The head of the Garda’s Mayo division, Chief Supt Tony McNamara, told The Irish Times that the number of gardaí on duty in the area had been scaled back significantly since Christmas. Staff levels were now “close to normal”, he said.
Mayo recorded one of the highest rates of complaints about conduct of gardaí in the recent report published by the Garda Ombudsman Commission.
The commission attributed the high number in Mayo to complaints arising from protests over the Corrib gas project. It wrote to the then minister for justice, Brian Lenihan, about possible examination of management of crowd protests and civil disobedience, but Mr Lenihan didn’t think such an examination was “appropriate at that time for him to request”.
Chief Supt McNamara said an investigation was continuing into alleged damage of netting erected by Shell at Glengad as part of works to prepare for the pipeline landfall.
The netting had been put up to prevent birds nesting on the cliffs during construction works.
Labour Party president Michael D Higgins has questioned the legality of the netting, and said it would appear that Shell contractors were “playing fast and loose with the EU Birds Directive”.
Shell EP Ireland said that it had no comment to make on Mr Higgins’s comments.