Slugger O'Toole

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Los Lobos has commented 73 times (0 in the last month).

1. Comment on Gerry Adams says loyalists have much in common with republican neighbours and calls for dialogue
   on 14 April 2013 at 9:49 pm

   Its a pity Gerry Adams didn’t call for the “sniper at work” badges on sale at the conference to be binned! If he had have done so (and thats a big if), perhaps some people could take seriously his comments on loyalists having something in common with the likes of himself. But he didn’t, he preferred to rewrite history to suit his narrow sectarian agenda that gives the Provos the high moral ground and makes the rest of society feel like second class citizens, Statesman he is not!

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2. Comment on A5 ruling: “They should not be left in any doubt about what may or may not occur…”
   on 9 April 2013 at 11:06 pm

   This may clarify things for anyone interested in the legalities of the situation. PRESS RELEASE 1

   The many supporters of the Alternative A5 Alliance welcome Mr Justice Stephens’s ruling (albeit with a seven day stay) to quash the DRD Minister’s decision to build a new dual carriageway running parallel with the present A5 and thereby providing the predominantly rural area with the luxury of six lanes of traffic from Newbuildings to Ballygawley. Thankfully, the decision based on a breach of the Habitats Directive and on the need to save the protected species including salmon in the Foyle and Finn Special Areas of Conservation, will also save 3000 acres of productive farmland, many businesses and permanent jobs, as well as sparing many householders the devastation that this unnecessary new dual carriageway would have caused.

   The breach of the Habitats Directive affected a major part of the scheme and could not be ignored. Mr Justice Stephens has therefore refused to grant DRD its request for a stay so that it could belatedly undertake an assessment, even though the law requires such an assessment be carried out before the decision to proceed with the road is taken. He has allowed a limited 7 day stay in relation to any appeal to the Court of Appeal.

   Quashing the decision means that the vested lands will be returned to their former owners, who now face the challenge of undoing all the damage caused by six months of preliminary works by Roads Service’s contractors. It means that last December’s undertaking to the Court to pay compensation for such damage must now be honoured and paid in full.

   The AA5A maintains that this road, as conceived, was never truly in the public interest. It was promoted by politicians whose ambitions, aspirations and political compromises it served. Moreover, by pre-determining that the A5 had to be replaced by a dual carriageway, the politicians removed all discussions on the cost effectiveness and environmental impact of other alternative upgrades to the A5. This effectively neutered the Public Inquiry and left it with little to determine other than the exact route of the proposed new road. Public participation was effectively stifled.

   We also maintain that the process contained many other serious and fatal flaws such as the low traffic figures for the route, the many inadequacies of the Agricultural Impact Assessments, the failure to assess the negative economic impacts upon the local community and the inappropriateness of conducting a Human Rights Impact Assessment long before the Public Inquiry even took place. Moreover, as there was no habitats assessment, then the Environmental Statement cannot be fit for purpose either.

   The Court upheld our argument that the specification that the new road had to be a dual carriageway should have been subject to a Strategic Environmental Assessment – another breach of European Environmental legal requirements. The Judge ruled this complaint out of time as we should have challenged the government on this point before the Public Inquiry took place, though he acknowledges that there we ‘may have faced difficulties’. In view of our limited funds such an expectation of a group of ordinary people seems high indeed. It is surely for the Government to comply with its obligations and, with constant access to legal advice at public expense, it should have known what these requirements were. Furthermore, if a Strategic Environmental Assessment was required, then, regardless of time limits for a challenge, the Minister should not have given the scheme the go head in its absence.

   This was a road scheme that would have done far more harm than good but it was left to ordinary citizens to fight a High Court battle to prove that. When in November 2011 the RoI reneged on its commitment to pay half the cost of this unnecessary new road, the DRD decided, nonetheless, to press on with its plan. It did so with no further consultation or meaningful re appraisal of the damage the scheme would do to both the local economy and the environment, including Special Areas of Conservation. This was despite the obvious fact that a partial scheme could not and would not deliver the benefits the Department claimed for the scheme at the Public Inquiry some months earlier. There was no consideration of the long term adverse impact on local businesses including farm businesses or of the indirect adverse consequences for the rest of the rural community. There was no concern for the householders whose homes would be devalued or for the local people who would be forced to make detours and longer daily journeys as their local road was now closed. Indeed the DRD saw the increased expenditure on fuel as a cost benefit of the scheme as it meant more fuel tax for the government.

   Is it too much to hope that Roads Service will now focus on upgrading the existing A5 in line with previously declared Roads Service Policy, so as to deliver improvements to this road that are needed but in a way that is affordable and not unnecessarily destructive of our environment, livelihoods and community? If the Department seeks to waste more tax payers’ money on promoting this scheme, we will continue to oppose it.

   Six months of Preliminary Works on Sections 1 and 3 have caused a lot of avoidable and needless damage to farmland, hedgerows and trees despite the protests of landowners. They have been rightly promised compensation but this could have been an entirely avoidable public expense. Moreover, it is as impossible to compensate for the loss of mature trees which cannot be readily replaced as it is impossible to compensate for the stress and ill health suffered by those directly affected by this scheme.

   So, now land owners will have to argue for compensation to help restore their land to its former state and level of productivity, all because a government Department refused to suspend work until the outcome of the legal challenge was known – as we argued in Court last December. This unpleasant and unjust situation stems from the unsatisfactory Compulsory Purchase Laws which continuously put ordinary citizens at a disadvantage – deluging them with unfamiliar reports and papers with overly short time scales to read, absorb and react to same but with no financial assistance to help cope with the Public Inquiry process. These same processes allow our Government to take over private property without agreeing a fair price in advance or paying before taking possession. This is why its victims feel compulsory purchase is more like confiscation. Since September 2012 Roads Service has constantly asserted its legal ownership of the vested land without paying most of the landowners a penny for it; has carried out extensive and damaging preliminary works on land that has been owned by the same family for generations; has behaved as if the legal challenge was a minor irritant and doomed to failure. Indeed we have recently learnt that Roads Service thought so little of our Court challenge that it has paid over £750,000 of public funds in compensation to a small number of owners. So we have many reasons to feel vindicated and relieved to hear that Mr Justice Stephens has quashed the Minister’s decision.

   We would like to thank our legal team for their dedicated and tireless pursuit of this case on our behalf and in particular Greg Jones QC for his advice and expert presentation of our arguments to the Court. We also commend our solicitor, Roger Watts of C & J Black for his diligence on our behalf, his patience with our queries and his commitment to our cause.

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3. Comment on Micheál Martin in Belfast: “There is nothing inevitable about peace and progress”
   on 27 February 2013 at 11:01 pm

   As comic sketches go it was quite good, hard to know which line was the funniest, i liked this one. “Regrettably, the Dublin Government has decided that there will not be immediate progress on the A5, citing economic pressures.”

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4. Comment on Millward Brown Poll: Scary buns for Fine Gael?
   on 16 February 2013 at 10:26 pm

   If the will of the people dictate that FF and SF are partnered up to run the country in 2016 then that is democracy. Its not the Ireland of equals SF would wish for nor does it resemble anything close to what they killed up on two thousand people for, but hey, no one said it would be easy, right? As for FF, they deserve to get another chance don’t they? Come on, its not like they murdered anyone recently!

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5. Comment on “Let’s just start building in a business-like, decent-minded way.”
   on 19 December 2012 at 8:06 pm

   We already live in a one party state as can be seen by the lack of an opposition in Stormont, most people just don’t get that. As for a ‘lets all join the one Party’ suggestion? Germany of the 1930′s springs to mind!

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6. Comment on Sinn Fein defamation of Declan Gormley, and what comes next
   on 15 December 2012 at 10:16 pm

   The rather large hole in the DRD budget to pay for this case may well have to come from the £400 Million A5 project that the then DRD Minister Conor Murphy rammed through. There must surely be many questions around this project given the guilt of Mr Murphy and the methods he employed whilst in office? Time will tell i guess but Danny Kennedy must now have one hell of a headache because of the actions of his predecessor!

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7. Comment on “Overall, the Audit Office found that the reporting of efficiencies was not comprehensive, transparent or meaningful.”
   on 11 December 2012 at 3:16 pm

   The withdrawing of millions of pounds from the DRD budget in 08-09 happened around the same time Conor Murphy was slashing budgets in order that money could be freed up and put towards the A5 project! That the entire Government were gung ho and wreckless in how this was achieved demonstrates the type of politics we have in NI – the politics of illusion.

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8. Comment on Two Es in Green – Education and Economy – and a pot-shot at Minister Poots
   on 29 October 2012 at 2:11 pm

   Thanks for that Rossbrown. Mr Mc Cann’s article is good on the topic. However its his article, nowhere does the Green Party come out fired up against the A5 proposal! This is the biggest environmental issue to hit Northern Ireland for many years. Its something the Greens should be mentioning everytime they get the media’s attention, instead it is now been left to 18 individuals in the AA5A (Alternative A5 Alliance) to do all the heavy lifting, in terms of seeking legal redress! I personally spoke to Eamon Ryan on this issue when the Greens were in Government, he just shrugged his shoulders and said that there was nothing they could do about it! That position seems to have remained within the Green Party, for that reason i cannot find it in my heart to take seriously your concern for the environment. Blithly stating that “the Greens in ROI didn’t hav e responsibility for the transport portfolio” is limp in the extreme, have you never heard of ‘collective responsibility’ when in Government? The Greens didn’t have many other portfolios in that Government, however they reaped ‘environmental kudos’ when positive environmental outcomes occured and heralded the benefits of coalition Government. And for the record the St Andrews Agreement did not offically include the A5 (google lord lairds question to the house of lords on that point). Regardless of what happened its to little to late for the Greens to be taken seriously on this topic. They didn’t even object or send a speaker to the Public Inquiry last year. You can only judge a party by its actions not its words. I’m sorry to say that the actions of the Greens on the A5 proposal to date have been dismal.

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9. Comment on Two Es in Green – Education and Economy – and a pot-shot at Minister Poots
   on 28 October 2012 at 11:06 am

   Why was no mention made of the biggest proposed road Northern Ireland has ever seen – the A5? This proposal (if allowed) will see over 3000 acres of the best crop growing land Northern Ireland covered in tar! The fact that the Green party supported this proposal when they were in Government in the Republic of Ireland should not in any way prevent the Green Party today from taking a robust stance against this frankenstine proposal. If the Green Party cannot make a stand against what has come to be known as the biggest ‘land grab’ in the history of Northern Ireland then i doubt if they can be taken seriously on other worthwhile issues they rightly support.

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10. Comment on “However, the Minister told us that she was too busy to see us.”
    on 20 February 2012 at 10:19 pm

    If ever there was a Minister who was completly out of her depth (excuse the pun), its got to be Ms Ni Chuilin. I know the phrase “poacher turned gamekeeper” is oft used to highlight a point, but it seems to work on so many levels regarding this issue and the environment in general!

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