Leader of the Green Party,
Eamon Ryan T.D. has now unequivocally drawn the Green Red Line in the
Sand for
the Fine Gael Party when he told the Taoiseach today, in no uncertain
terms, that
the proposed fracked gas import terminal on the Shannon "is a climate change issue of the first order" .
He went on to say that "This government, if it wants to show climate
leadership should stop this project now".
The entire Movement Against
Climate Breakdown is now speaking with one clear voice and one clear
message
for the whole world to hear: Get the idea of US fracked Gas imports to
Ireland
out of your minds, because it is never going to happen.
The voice of the movement against
Climate
Breakdown is getting louder and louder with leading members of the
Environmental, Scientific, Legal and
political world queuing up to tell the Irish ruling party, Fine Gael,
"Do
the Right Thing" and take the US
fracked gas import project off the EU special status list called
Projects of
Common Interest (PCI).
If the government is
serious about climate change, it cannot be seen to be giving the
diritest of all fossil fuels, fracked gas, a free pass while inflicting
higher and higher carbon taxes on individuals with no choice.
One senior member in the one
of the big parties in Ireland this week revealed that "the Greens will get whatever they want" as a coalition partner in any future government after the elections
which are
due to take place within months in Ireland - in which it is expected to
emerge
holding the balance of power.
Fine Gael and
Fianna Fail would do well to reassess their own questionable support
for the
fracked gas project if they hope to be able to attract environmental
parties
into a possible coalition after the next election.
Eamon Ryan is now clearly
leveraging this position of power he has at the moment in Irish
politics in a
movement that is slowly killing, with a thousand cuts, the proposed
plans to
import fracked gas from the USA to Ireland.
The Taoiseach's reply is what
has really surprised observers for its inaccuracies.
Referring to the Irish gas
field at Corrib, he stated that
"Corrib is going to run out quite soon. That leaves
us with only the
pipeline from the UK as our only source of gas".
However, Denis O'Sullivan,
Managing Director of Gas Networks Ireland, had already confirmed to the
Joint Committee
on Communications, Climate Action and the Envrionment on October 14th,
that
Corrib had a lifespan of 12-15 years.
Mr O'Sullivan had also informed the
Seanad
Special Select Committee on October 8th that there were two
interconnectors to
the UK that operated in parallel, and not one interconnector,
as the Taoiseach stated today.
He
went on to say:
"In terms of Security of Supply and
the
Interconnectors, as I mentioned, the interconnectors we have with the
UK are extremely
robust. They've been there since 1993. We haven't had a single outage
on those,
touch wood, and the fact that we completed a twinning of the last
section of
pipeline in Scotland last year gives two completely independent
interconnectors
with Scotland and puts us in a very robust position in terms of
security of
supply".
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The
exact statement by Eamon
Ryan in the D�il today was as follows:
"The Minister says the
PCI is in our common interest. I believe it is not. It does provide
advanced
planning for any project. The
Minister
says it has planning already, but this planning is far from certain.
And this
will put it through a planning process
that I believe would not be appropriate
and right. The
Minister says he is not going to support
financing for it, but we don't know what the American government may do
or what
other actors may do to pursue this project. This is not in our
interest. We
found out only last week from questions asked by Ciaran Cuffe to the
European Commission
officials that it could be stopped tomorrow. I'm asking that you do
that.
That's in our common interest - not proceeding with it.
This is a climate change
issue of the first order. This
government, if it wants to show climate leadership should stop this
project
now."
The Taoiseach replied as
follows:
"Thanks Deputies.
This is a private sector project,
not a government project, but the advice that we have is that it could be useful for Ireland when it comes to
future energy
security, recognising that we will continue to use natural gas for the decades ahead.
We're reliant at the
moment on imported gas from the pipeline with the UK and gas from
Corrib.
Corrib is going to run out
quite soon. That leaves us with only the pipeline from the UK as our
only
source of gas . If that were ever cut off we would be in serious
trouble,
almost immediately. We would be facing brownouts and blackouts quite frankly. And a
terminal on the other
side of the country gives us a potential alternative way to get gas in
. And it
doesn't just have
to be fracked gas. It
could be sea gas".
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