Verona Murphy's Proposals For Rosslare "Worse Than The Corrib Gas Giveaway"
Gary O’Brien has slammed Verona Murphy’s proposal to spend €100m of public money on Rosslare Harbour to encourage the Dutch company XELLZ to exploit Ireland’s huge wind energy potential.
The Éirígí spokesperson for Wexford made his comments in response to the revelation that Murphy had recently met with Micheál Martin for the purpose of ‘advancing negotiations’ for an XELLZ deal. Speaking from Wexford Town, O’Brien said,
“Ireland, like the rest of the world, is now in the early stages of an energy revolution which will see renewable and non-carbon-based energy production rapidly replace coal, gas and oil.
As an island-nation, Ireland is very well positioned to produce massive amounts of electricity from existing wind and solar technology, as well as from future wave and tidal technologies. These technologies will allow Ireland to become close to energy independent and to potentially become a major exporter of electricity.
Every person in Ireland could and should benefit from this energy revolution. Some should benefit directly through the jobs and other economic activity that will flow from building, installing and maintaining of renewable energy facilities.
And every citizen should benefit through the supply of low-cost Irish electricity for home, transport and industrial use.
But this will not happen if we follow the path that Verona Murphy and the government want to go down - a path that will see public money used to build the infrastructure for private companies to exploit our huge renewable energy potential.
This is exactly the same short-term gombeen approach that was taken with the Corrib Gas Field twenty years ago. Back then the government rolled out the red-carpet for Shell to take control of Ireland’s largest known deposit of natural gas.
Gas from the Corrib Gas Field lights the Atlantic night sky
Shell was given a sweetheart tax deal. Environmental and planning rules were thrown out the window. The views of the local community were completely ignored. And when citizens peacefully resisted the giveaway of our gas they were attacked, beaten, arrested and jailed by the state.
At the time the government said that their approach would create lots of local employment and that the entire nation would benefit from the Corrib gas coming onshore. They also claimed that the state would benefit from corporation taxes that would be paid by Shell and the other energy companies.
In reality the number of long-term jobs that were created for local people was very limited and the Irish people are now paying the same market price for Corrib gas as they do for gas that’s coming from Scotland, Norway or Russia. And we now know that the state has not, and will not, receive a single cent of corporation tax from the Corrib Gas.
The political establishment is now planning to take same disastrous approach with our wind resources that they took with our gas resources. Planning regulations have already been changed to facilitate fast-track construction of offshore wind farms. And now we have Verona Murphy lobbying government to plough €100m of public money into Rosslare harbour to make it a more attractive and profitable option for the Dutch company XELLZ.
The Arklow Bank wind farm is currently Ireland’s only operational offshore farm
If the government continues with their current approach and backs Murphy’s proposals for Rosslare we will end up a situation far worse than the Corrib gas giveaway because the energy potential from our offshore wind is far greater than the energy generated from Corrib.
Their approach may generate jobs, but there is no way of guaranteeing that those jobs will be for people from Wexford or even from Ireland. And the Irish people won’t see the benefit of energy security or low-cost electricity. Instead we will pay whatever the market price for electricity might happen to be.
Éirígí believes that the state should invest public money in Rosslare harbour, but only as part of a joined up energy, environmental and economic strategy - a strategy that would see Rosslare become the logistical hub for semi-state companies like the ESB and Bord na Mona to build large offshore windfarms that would remain under permanent public ownership.
The energy generated by these windfarms should then be used to provide the Irish people and businesses with low-cost electricity to encourage them to make the transition away from carbon-based sources of energy.”