Mayo's green agenda should apply to Erris as much as the rest of the county

by Caoimhin Rowland

Ballina has become a beacon of environmentalism, led in no small part by Independent Councillor Mark Duffy’s ambition in seeing a just transition implemented in his hometown.

An ambitious plan aided by social enterprise, Accelerating Change Together, has the aim of making the town on the Moy, Ireland’s greenest.

Combined with the Mary Robinson Centre for climate justice, the north Mayo capital is leading the way in a Just Transition from fossil fuels and creating a more liveable town for its residents.

Just transition is a buzz phrase we’re beginning to hear a lot lately.

In essence it means that those who have contributed the least to polluting our shared environment should not shoulder the burden of how we enact climate policies.

Those on lower incomes and from developing parts of the world should be less impacted by a transition away from fossil fuels.

For example low-income communities should be granted the means to retrofit their homes and dividends from renewables should be felt in communities that have been historically disadvantaged.

There are fewer areas in Ireland that suffer from more social depravation than those in the north Mayo.

The Mary Robinson Climate conference acted as an event to articulate these points and bring leading speakers and academics from across the globe to Ballina.

Mary Robinson was herself in attendance at the event where she was heckled by Maura Harrington over her silence on the Shell to Sea campaign. “Madame Elder,” as she was monikered during Harrington’s tirade, made time recently to protest in New York City.

Robinson spoke to an assembled crowd in Manahattan at the “End Fossil Fuels” march as she called herself an “angry granny.”

Young climate activists she said give her hope, a seasoned Maura Harrington doesn’t fit into that category but her consistency and longevity in her fight against fossil fuels is worthy of admiration.

Maura Harrington was given the opportunity to discuss the proposed connection between the Corrib gas field and the recently discovered Inishkea gas field at a meeting of Mayo County Council's economic development, planning and marine strategic policy committees as a member of a delegation representing Friends of the Earth.

She was, as you’d expect, in complete opposition.

“Leave the gas for millennia where it’s been for millennia,” the retired school teacher pleaded.

As for Mary Robinson, she was in New York, not in Ballina nor has she ever been at the “coal-face” (No pun intended) in Erris.

Why do sentiments spoken in Ballina not translate to the harsh reality of fossil fuel extraction in Ballinaboy?

Harrington brought with her a map from the renowned Mayo Dark Skies brochure.

An astronomers dream is how they describe north west Mayo, but “it pains me that the dark skies stop in Bangor Erris,” Harrington remarked and stated, “all because of the gas terminal and its light polluting infrastructure.”

The chair of the aforementioned strategic policy committee, Mark Duffy, convened the session. The gathering included Fianna Fail councillors Al McDonnell and Martin McLoughlin, as well as Fine Gael's Jarlath Munnelly. Fine Gael councillor Ger Deere and Neil Cruise were absent from the meeting.

Councillor Al McDonnell directed a call to action towards Jerry MacEvilly, the head of policy with Friends of the Earth. who was also lobbying councillors, along with Harrington, urging them to advocate for renewable energy alternatives instead of calling for a complete halt to gas exploration.

This point, while well intentioned, made no real sense.

McDonnell is a member of Fianna Fail, he was speaking to MacEvilly, a former Fianna Fail policy advisor, who helped script McDonnell’s party’s’ own programme for government in the run up to the 2020 elections.

Jarlath Munnelly, Martin McLoughlin, and Mark Duffy all addressed the urgent issue of climate breakdown and its associated risks.

It would be hard not to, considering the night before the meeting the leading story on RTÉ News was of the Libyan city of Derna, where we are still unsure of a death toll that has already risen over 15,000.

This summer has been characterised by unusual weather events, wildfires in Hawaii, Greece and Canada combined with flash flooding, leaving vast swathes of our earth already inhospitable.

Yet, the councillors still voted in favour of fossil fuels.

Independent Ballina Councillor Mark Duffy provided the closing remarks, ultimately expressing a “favourable” view towards continuing with the gas field proposal and passed a motion to write a letter to the Taoiseach on the matter on behalf of the fossil fuel company, Europa Oil and Gas.

Biodiversity walls and sensory gardens for Ireland’s greenest town but it’s more fossil fuels and pollution for Erris?