EU Court scuttles planned fracked gas terminal permission

‘Far reaching’ EU Court ruling on Shannon LNG terminal welcomed

The European Court of Justice has advised the Irish High Court that the 2018 extension by An Bord Pleanála to the 2008 planning permission for the construction of a proposed €500m fracked gas terminal on the south bank of the River Shannon estuary must be considered as a new permit for the purposes of the Habitats Directive and must be subject to a new Assessment under the Habitats Directive.

read full story / add a comment

European Court to rule on Shannon LNG Planning Permission
Court Advised to quash An Bord Pleanala’s consent for Shannon fracked gas terminal

An Bord Pleanála’s extension to the 2008 grant of planning permission for a €500m liquified natural gas terminal on the Shannon Estuary will be the subject of a Reference from the European Court of Justice on Wednesday.

A Preliminary Reference to the European Court was made by Irish High Court Justice Garret Simons on 1 February 2019 after a Judicial Review was brought by Friends of the Irish Environment [FIE].

read full story / add a comment

The country must be in a state of shock now that some sanity in the Covid-19 situation has broken out. The Irish Times of all places has actually published an article with this headline. It is unheard of:

Covid-19: Doctors call for ‘utterly meaningless’ daily figures to be dropped

We have known for some time that many doctors know the whole thing on reporting daily cases (as well as previously locking up the healthy and forcing them to wear masks), for a diseases that about 95% of the time only kills those who are very ill already, is a total farce. However mainly due to watching their backs, careers, being social ostracised or downright cowardice, have been afraid to speak out. Now, at long last the first tentative steps have been taken. Perhaps because they realize the entire medical establishment is rapidly losing all credibility because it has gone along with this farce and most people are obeying the rules just because everyone else does. And this brings us to this historic announcement today:

A number of doctors have called for an end to the daily Covid-19 figures, describing them as a “self-perpetuating cycle of misery”. ..“causing huge anxiety” and is “utterly meaningless”.

read full story / add a comment

Bertie Ahern’s desire ‘to have the power of the Mayor of Shanghai’ is cited in an objection to the proposed fee for objection to forestry applications and appeals in a submission to the Draft Agriculture Appeals (Amendment) Bill 2020. The draft legislation follows on from the 2019 McKenna Report which states that the opportunities that people have to comment and object to forestry proposals represents ‘a barrier to efficient decision-making’ and has ‘created further delays with significant administrative costs’ so the case for a fee is ‘unarguable’. read full story / add a comment

Breaking News. Not reported by mainstream media or RTE. The Berlin rally against Covid-19 restrictions on Aug 1st had 1.3 million people turn up !!!! -How come we never heard about this? At the rally for 29th Aug, there are 2 million expected
This is a report back from Health Freedom Ireland (HFI) on the protest organised by HFI in conjunction with the Yellow Vests at the Customs House Dublin on Aug 22nd. Given Covid is about the only thing in the news these days and happens to be the single most important issue of our time because of the way civil liberties have been taken away from the bulk of humanity, it is therefore prudent we give it the proper coverage and not the biased negative spin from the mainstream media.

Large numbers (estimated at around 6k) turned up for the peaceful protest against oppressive government restrictions and mandates over COVID-19 on Saturday, August 22nd at Customs House, Dublin.

The non-political event was organised by Health Freedom Ireland and Yellow Vest Ireland to voice concerns regarding government mandates, demanding transparency, proportionality of decisions and accountability by government officials and advisors. read full story / add a comment

Tracey O’ Mahony is an Irish Barrister-at-Law is like many is concerned about the serious erosion of our fundamental freedoms in the last six months.

At the start of this Covid crisis, many thought it was just a virus and if they followed government we would soon get back to normal life. Clearly that is not the case. Instead the "experts" tell us this will continue indefinitely into the future, we have surrendered our rights to experts, bureaucrats and polticans and the global economy is being destroyed. Not only that all forms of social interaction -the very essence of being human - have been severely and continue to be curtailed and now we are told we will have to be tracked, monitored, forcefully tested, DNA sampled and vaccinated.

The penny is beginning to drop that the powers that be don't plan on allowing society to go back to the old ways. They took about the new normal and frankly it looks pretty ugly.

So Tracey O'Mahony is someone who is finally taking a stand and doing something about it. She has started a GoFund-Me page to finance the campaign. Already the woke crowd have attacked her in an effort to discredit her. But there has been no criticism of any sort from these types and they act like pure sheep which is a very dangerous thing to happen because powerful people always take advantage of sheep and often slaughter when they are finished with them.

read full story / add a comment

Ireland Has a New Coronavirus Fear: Americans Who Flout Quarantine read full story / add a comment

High Court calls Ireland and the Attorney General into challenge to Legal Aid Board’s refusal to consider aid for environmental charity.

Judge highlight Aarhus Convention’s requirements for access to justice

High Court Justice Niamh Hyland has directed that Ireland and the Attorney General be joined in the proceedings brought by an environmental charity against the Legal Aid Board for its refusal to consider an application for legal aid because the charity was a company and not an individual. read full story / add a comment

The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has released a press release today where they did their own analysis of the excess deaths in Ireland since early March and the figure they come to is between 1,100 and 1,200 which is substantially lower than the "official" Covid death toll of 1700+.

This means that as was suspected the official number was way too liberal with categorizing deaths as due to Covid. This new figure is closer to a regular year of flu in terms of number of deaths and conclusively proves that Covid is barely any more dangerous than flu in terms of threat. What we see here is a slow back track and while the emphasis is still on social distancing, this is merely to give cover to the fact that at a minimum this has been one big mistake and a massive over-reaction but is true of many other countries but not all. It could be viewed as how badly group think has taken over our society because there were moments in the last few months where one dare not challenge the official figures for fear of social ostracizing
read full story / add a comment

IRELAND'S UN SECURITY COUNCIL SEAT

LETTER SENT TO IRISH BROADSHEET NEWSPAPERS

Sir,

Ireland’s previous stint on the UN Security Council in 2001 is nothing to be proud of in terms of promoting world peace.

In 2001, under the then Fianna Fail Government with Brian Cowan as Foreign Minister, Ireland voted for several resolutions that ultimately approved the US led invasion of Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, in what then Labour TD Michael D. Higgins termed “an illegal war”. Nineteen years later with no end in sight America’s longest war has caused the deaths and injuries of tens of thousands, many of them women and children, and has created deep bitterness, division and sectarianism. read full story / add a comment

Shannon LNG faces further challenge in High Court
Judicial Review of listing as ‘Project of Common Interest’

The controversial Shannon LNG terminal proposed for the Shannon Estuary faces its second challenge in the High Court from the environmental charity, Friends of the Irish Environment today. The environmental organisation is asking the Irish Court to seek a ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union on whether the inclusion of the project on a list of priority European Energy infrastructure was lawful. read full story / add a comment

Legal Aid Board refusal to fund environmental NGO faces High Court challenge
Irish legal costs ‘prohibitively expensive’

The High Court will tomorrow [June 30] hear a two-day challenge to the Legal Aid Board’s refusal to provide legal aid to the environmental charity Friends of the Irish Environment [FIE].

The NGO sought the funding in April of 2018 to support its Judicial Review of the National Development Plan and the National Planning Framework. This case alleges that the Government of Ireland erred in law in failing to adequately fulfil its obligations under the Strategic Environmental Assessment and the Habitats Directive when approving the plans. read full story / add a comment

PLANNING BOARD QUESTIONS DURSEY ISLAND MASS TOURISM PROJECT
Not Satisfied Over Bird Protection on Remote Island

An Bord Pleanála has sought further information on the application by Cork County Council in partnership with Fáilte Ireland for a €10 million development on Dursey Island off the west Cork coast.

The 6.5 km long uninhabited island, currently accessed by a cable car with a capacity of 6 and return journey time of 20 minutes, is to be replaced by a state-of-the-art two-way cable car system capable of carrying up to 300 people each way every hour. The project includes an extensive Visitor Centre with restaurant, gift shop and glazed elevator on the mainland. read full story / add a comment

The Programme for Government produced by Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green Party promises a lot that is encouraging, but on the issue of US military use of Shannon Airport - which the majority of Irish people oppose - it is disappointing. The change of government provided an opportunity to end Irish complicity in the ongoing cycles of war and occupation that have been responsible for the loss of millions of lives this century. The military industrial complex is also the single biggest polluter on the planet (see recent study from Brown University’s Costs of War project). The US. Department of Defense has a larger annual carbon footprint than most countries on earth, and with its global network of bases and logistics networks the US military is the single biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world outside of nation-states themselves. [1] read full story / add a comment

High Court to hear challenge against unsustainable fishing in Ireland and the EU

The Irish High Court today formally initiated a Judicial Review proceedings aimed at challenging the EU Regulation setting 2020 fishing quotas under the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) because of its failure to meet a legally defined deadline of ending overfishing in all stocks by 2020.

A judge will be assigned on July 15th to hear the application for leave to apply for a Judicial Review from the environmental charity Friends of the Irish Environment. read full story / add a comment

Bord na Móna ‘Enforcement Holiday’ flies in the face of a High Court Judgment
Semi-state accused of declaring Brexit for 80,000 hectares

An ‘enforcement holiday’ currently being exercised by Bord na Mona to allow industrial harvesting to continue this year across its bogs ‘flies in the face of a High Court Judgment’, according to the environmental charity Friends of the Irish Environment [FIE]. read full story / add a comment

"Symbols are what unite and divide people. Symbols give us our identity, our self-image,our way of explaining ourselves to others. Symbols in turn determine the kinds of stories we tell; and the stories we tell determine the kind of history we make and remake."
Mary Robinson, Inauguration speech as President of Ireland, December 3, 1990

Introduction

On the night of the 8 March 1966 a massive explosion was heard in the centre of Dublin and Nelson's Pillar came crashing to the ground in hundreds of tons of rubble. No one was hurt and a stump was all that could be seen of the 157 year old monument. It was not the first time that monuments had been attacked in Ireland and certainly not the last, at least figuratively, with a series of later monuments accruing many derogatory nicknames from the Dublin people.

The recent spate of attacks on monuments in the US and the Uk has opened up the debate on the cultural issues they provoke, ranging from those who can't believe the attacks hadn't happened sooner to those who see their destruction as mob vandalism.
read full story / add a comment

Today we are reproducing a press release from the Socialist Party on Covid-19 with our own comments added because the Left in general along with all the opposition parties has completely swallowed the Covid-19 is a deadly pandemic narrative hook, line and sinker. On another story soon, we will address the why. In the meantime from their perspective protecting workers rights and health is the natural thing to do but they seem confused by the sudden concern by the government for people. We offer a different perspective that explains things in a more consistent way,
read full story / add a comment

Last week the Irish Independent carried this scare story with the headline above. The exact same story was also carried by hundreds of mainstream news sites too. It is a very good example of the relentless propaganda that has been appearing in the mainstream media during the Covid scare operation trying to hype it up to the maximum and even now they are doing their utmost to keep it going.

It is with this in mind that the story is carried here except we break it down to show at the manipulation works. The first point is that the media and those pushing this propaganda know well that most people only read headlines and the headline itself manages to link the word Coronavirus with some new strange disease. The purpose would appear to not only keep the fear going but to suggest to the population that Covid might be even more deadly and is perhaps mutating into the much promised and anticipated second wave. So it is laying the ground work for the second wave too. read full story / add a comment

The following is a letter to Irish media outlets from our friend, anti-war activist Tarak Kauff. Tarak spent most of a year in Ireland as a result of his non-violent action to inspect a US military plane at Shannon Airport. read full story / add a comment