The Costs of the Celtic Tiger: 'Telling it like it is'

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday August 22, 2002 22:23 by Graham Caswell - Various caswell at indigo dot ie

10 years of unsustainable development in Ireland

Earth Summit Ireland's excellent report "Telling it like it is -10 years of unsustainable development in Ireland" was launched today in preparation for the upcoming Earth Summit in Johannesburg.

Earth Summit Ireland's excellent report "Telling it like it is -10 years of unsustainable development in Ireland" was launched today in preparation for the upcoming Earth Summit in Johannesburg. Since Ireland is held up internationally for emulation as a model for economic development and the success of free market neo-liberalism the report is globally important as it illustrates the environmental and human costs that have accompanied Ireland's recent economic acceleration.

The "Telling it like it is" report is compiled by Ireland's leading environmental NGOs and uses 34 stories of unsustainable practices in Ireland as examples of how Ireland has paid lip service to the main international environmental treaties that it has signed. It is clear, to-the-point and very readable.

Read about how Ireland is burning its last bogs at a rate of 1,500 ha a year to put even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Learn about the mercuric soap factory that was expelled from Britain for poisoning its workers, which sells a toxic and illegal product to Africa - and that got £750,000 from the IDA. Then there's the story of how local authorities in Galway ignored over half of the 3,266 submissions received about a controversial road project because they were deemed to be 'in the wrong envelopes'.

And that's just the first three stories.

Did you know that the UCD technician who cares for Ireland’s Native Apple Collection (an orchard of Ireland's unique and endangered apple species) was instructed to spend 50% of his time on researching grasses for golf courses last year? Or that the Aghafad pig production unit has 100,000 pigs on a 40 acre site in an intensive pig factory 'farm' of horrific suffering and vast pollution? That's 2,500 pigs per acre.

The report is full of information, facts, and statistics and will be useful to Irish environmental campaigners long after the Johannesburg Earth Summit is over. It is available for download at http://www.earthsummit-ireland.org/tellusyourstory.htm .

There's also an accompanying report for the United Nations Environmental Programme which details how each of the examples given contravenes agreements that Ireland has signed up to - Agenda 21, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Forest Principals, and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The full Earth Summit Ireland site is at http://www.earthsummit-ireland.org/