Upcoming Events

National | Anti-Capitalism

no events match your query!

Blog Feeds

The Saker

Indymedia ireland

Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Army Sergeant Travis Decker Murdered His Three Children After Being Denied Mental Health Care at JBL... Sat Jun 07, 2025 04:52 | JBLM Whistleblowers
A corrupt military police force and incompetent Commander who denied emergency mental health care and crisis counseling to an American service member resulted in the murder of the sergeant's three young daughters

offsite link Gaza doctor grieves her nine children killed in Israeli strike Sun May 25, 2025 20:00 | imc
Israeli regime continues it's slaughter
'The children were completely charred'

Paediatrician Alaa al-Najjar was treating victims of Israeli attacks when her children were killed by an Israeli strike on their home

offsite link British doctors working in Gaza describe territory as a ?slaughterhouse? Sat May 24, 2025 00:23 | imc
There?s no food getting in so people are starving,? surgeon Tom Potokar says
British doctors working in Gaza have described the territory as a ?slaughterhouse,? where the patients they are treating are severely malnourished.

Plastic surgeons and orthopedic specialists from the UK are based at the Amal and Nasser hospitals in Khan Younis in the south of the territory.

Dr. Tom Potokar, a plastic surgeon specializing in burn injuries, has worked in Gaza 16 times but said this mission had revealed a level of destruction far greater than his last visit in 2023,

offsite link It is time to talk about the Out of Control Immigration. Mon Mar 31, 2025 22:12 | imc
For the last few years since the CV19 scamdemic undocumented immigration into Ireland has surged. No one is allowed discuss it because they do not want any rational debate about it. If you do you are labelled an extremist. However this out of control immigration is fully facilitated by the Irish government and the EU and the shady figure behind the Neo Con movement pushing for endless war, wokeism and globalist agenda.

offsite link [Dublin] National Demonstration for Palestine: End Israeli Apartheid & Genocide Thu Mar 06, 2025 22:35 | ipsc
Sat, 22 March 2025, 13:00 Assemble at the Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square, Dublin 1
The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, supported by over 150 Irish civil society organisations, has called another National Demonstration for Palestine on Saturday 22nd March.

The march will begin at the Garden of Remembrance at 1pm and finish outside the D?il on Molesworth Street/Kildare Street to bring our demands to the Irish government?s doorstep.

The Saker >>

Public Inquiry
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

offsite link RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony

offsite link Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony

offsite link Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony

offsite link RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony

offsite link Waiting for SIPO Anthony

Public Inquiry >>

Human Rights in Ireland
Promoting Human Rights in Ireland

Human Rights in Ireland >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link Sex Sells. It Always Has. And the Ad Industry Has Finally Remembered That Sat Aug 02, 2025 19:18 | Lee Taylor
Sex sells, says Lee Taylor, and that is something many brands, caught up in the joyless theatre of modern virtue-signalling, could well stand to relearn.
The post Sex Sells. It Always Has. And the Ad Industry Has Finally Remembered That appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Migrant Hotel Residents Film and Laugh as Protesters Clash in Islington Sat Aug 02, 2025 17:00 | Richard Eldred
Nine people have been arrested after protests in Islington turned ugly over a hotel housing asylum seekers, with migrants seen laughing and filming from the windows.
The post Migrant Hotel Residents Film and Laugh as Protesters Clash in Islington appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Record Number of Over-60s Referred to Prevent Amid Explosion in ?Extreme Right Wing? Views, eg Likin... Sat Aug 02, 2025 15:00 | Toby Young
The over-60s are being referred to Prevent in record numbers for their susceptibility to ?extreme Right-wing? ideology, with red flags including liking the Dambusters and owning the complete works of Shakespeare.
The post Record Number of Over-60s Referred to Prevent Amid Explosion in ?Extreme Right Wing? Views, eg Liking The Dambusters appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link GB News is Now Britain?s No1 News Channel Sat Aug 02, 2025 13:00 | Richard Eldred
Just four years after launch, the People's Channel has toppled the BBC to become Britain's most-watched news channel, beating both the Beeb and Sky in key July slots.
The post GB News is Now Britain?s No1 News Channel appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Red Cross Pays For Dependents of Asylum Seekers to Relocate to Britain Sat Aug 02, 2025 11:00 | Toby Young
The Red Cross is paying for the families of hundreds of migrants granted asylum to relocate to Britain. Confronted about this by the Telegraph, Yvette Cooper blamed the Tories. Shock!
The post Red Cross Pays For Dependents of Asylum Seekers to Relocate to Britain appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

We pay the bill for the great oil and gas grab

category national | anti-capitalism | other press author Saturday May 27, 2006 11:19author by Frank Connolly - Daily Ireland May 26 2006 Report this post to the editors

Frank Connolly's first (Friday) column for Daily Ireland

In recent weeks, there has been a veritable tsunami of establishment media drivel against those who demand that the Irish government halt the give away of the country's oil and gas reserves and stop pandering to the multi-nationals, much of it from the O’Reilly controlled press.
First Frank Connolly column hits the usual suspects... hard
First Frank Connolly column hits the usual suspects... hard

Last week it was reported that Ireland had made a joint claim with Britain, France and Spain over an 80,000 sq km area of the continental shelf some 200 miles off the south coast. The submission under the UN Law of the Sea Convention would, if successful, secure claims to oil and gas resources, as well as mineral and biological resources, on the sea bed in the Celtic Sea and the Bay of Biscay over an area equivalent in size to the island of Ireland. So far so good.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, who served the claim, said that if successful it may be seen as “tremendously significant” in future years given “soaring energy prices and improving capabilities to tap mineral resources in deeper waters.”

“We are effectively locking up control of thousands of square kilometres of unexplored seabed deep into the mid and south Atlantic for our children and their children,” he said. Comforting, because for years we have been told that there were no such potential riches off shore Ireland and only for the good grace of the oil and gas majors would anybody bother to look. Indeed, such were the costs and technical obstacles that every enticement had to be given to the multi-nationals to send out a few rigs to explore under the hostile Atlantic waters.

Is this the same Dermot Ahern who sat in cabinet with Charles Haughey, Ray Burke and still does with Bertie Ahern all of whom ensured through legislation they introduced in the 1980s and early ‘90s that the same multinationals do not pay any royalties and enjoy tax write offs so generous on exploration, production and even close down costs that our children and their children will never see a red cent in revenue from these vital national resources? Perhaps we should ask to whose children he is referring.

In recent weeks, there has been a veritable tsunami of establishment media drivel against those who demand that the Irish government halt the give away of the country's oil and gas reserves and stop pandering to the multinationals, much of it from the O’Reilly controlled press.

This followed the decision by the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey to push ahead with the planned route through Rossport, County Mayo, of the controversial Corrib gas pipeline. His decision followed the publication of a report by government commissioned consultants, Advantica. The Advantica report contained within its several hundred pages a clear endorsement of an earlier report by US consultants, Accufacts, commissioned by the Centre for Public Inquiry late last year.

That report stated clearly that the route through Rossport threatened the safety of local residents due to the high pressure, up to 345 bar, at which the unprocessed gas could travel from the seabed offshore to the proposed gas terminal at Bellanaboy. Advantica proposed that a valve be constructed at the shoreline where the pipeline hits land which could ensure that pressures never exceed 145 bar.

However, Accufacts stated clearly that even such a valve could not be guaranteed to prevent a rise in pressure and a possible rupture of the pipeline causing fatalities across a wide area. It was not failsafe. So either Mr Dempsey did not read the report he commissioned or has chosen to ignore its implications for the north Mayo community.

It has also emerged since the CPI report was published that a deal for the exploration and development of the Dunquin prospect off the south west coast has been hammered out between the world's largest oil company Exxon Mobil and the Irish company, Providence Resources, in which, surprise surprise, Tony O'Reilly personally holds a 45 per cent stake. Providence acquired the exploration licence for the prospect less than two years ago for the princely sum of €11,000 (£7,700).

Under the farm out agreement announced early this year Exxon has agreed to invest €100 million (£70 million) to explore and develop any find from a field which is estimated to be worth €20 billion (£14 billion). If these figures are correct, or anywhere near it, O'Reilly stands to make a personal profit of €1.4 billion without adding any value whatsoever to the licence he obtained.

So how did Mr O’Reilly get such a lucrative hold over the country’s oil and gas wealth? He told Forbes magazine, in an unusually unguarded interview, in September 1983, that his geologist had chosen six blocks of seabed for exploration.
“Since I own 35 per cent of the newspapers in Ireland I have close contact with the politicians. I got the blocks he wanted.” That’s how.

His son, Tony O’Reilly junior, chief executive of Providence Resources, recently likened the oil and gas business to property development: “I view it as a type of offshore property company. Our focus is to create more value tomorrow than we have today. There is no doubt that this is the best time to be in the oil and gas industry,” he told his father’s newspaper, the Irish Independent, last October.

It is an extraordinary situation that the government hands a licence to a company for almost nothing. It is worth noting that the Irish taxpayer paid for the seismic research that identified the potential find. The company reaps a huge profit without adding any value while the taxpayer, who funded the original investigation, gets no return in terms of royalties, taxation or even control over the availability or price of any gas or oil brought ashore. Extraordinary but true. As is the fact that a spokesperson for the Taoiseach recently told a prominent Dublin journalist that he was “terrified” of O’Reilly’s other newspaper, the Sunday Independent. In the coming weeks the government will announce the winning tenders for a fresh raft of exploration licenses in the Slyne, Erris and Donegal Basins off the north-west.

Among those competing are Shell and Statoil, Island Oil and Gas and Grianan Energy Ltd, a consortium of businessmen from Donegal that has promised to construct an electricity generating station in Donegal powered by any gas find and to re-invest significant profits in the community.

Watch this space.

Frank Connolly is Senior Reporter with Village magazine

Daily Ireland May 26 2006

Related Link: http://www.dailyireland.com

Corrib, the road to a sell-out
Corrib, the road to a sell-out

author by Seamuseenpublication date Sat Oct 14, 2006 20:44author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Article 10.1 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland clearly states:

"All natural resources, including the air and all forms of potential energy, within the jurisdiction of the Parliament and Government established by this Constitution and all royalties and franchises within that jurisdiction belong to the State subject to all estates and interests therein for the time being lawfully vested in any person or body."

Do any of the politicians mentioned in the article above know anything at all I wonder about Bunreacht na hEireann (the BASIC LAW of the Republic of Ireland)? Have they ever heard of it even?

If not, why not? - and when (if ever) do they to plan to learn about the basic law of the land?

In JAIL maybe? - that would be the right place now I myself believe, mixed in with generous amounts of "hard labour" swinging a pick.

That would learn them!!

Related Link: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Bunreacht+na+hEireann&btnG=Search
 
© 2001-2025 Independent Media Centre Ireland. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Independent Media Centre Ireland. Disclaimer | Privacy