Endangering human health and causing environmental harm is not what any government wants on its CV. But that is exactly what the Irish Government has been doing in the opinion of the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice. Government press people are trying to kill the story. The Government press response today (as carried in the Irish Times today) claiming that this was ancient history and that things are different now does not stand up. Already further legal action is threatened by the Commission in relation to a proposal to put a superdump next to a candidate Special Area of Conservation in Waterford. The Government tried to suppress the Commission's warning letter to it (known as a 'Reasoned Opinion'). Happily the letter came into the public domain despite that effort.

The Government of Ireland was slammed for ‘persistent widespread and serious’ failure to comply with EU waste law in the European Court Thursday (Sept. 23). Advocate-General Geelhoed told the Court that as a result of this failure the government has endangered human health and caused environmental harm. In a formal opinion delivered to the Court in Case C-494/01Commission v Ireland the Advocate-General recommends that the Court should declare Ireland to be in breach of no fewer than four separate Articles of the Waste Directive and also in breach of Article 10 of the EC Treaty.

The Advocate-General’s opinion is not binding but is normally followed by the Court. Because of the significance of the issues at stake in the case, both parties’ arguments were heard by the Court’s Grand Chamber (full panel) in July. The EU Commission brought the case to the Court following complaints about breaches of EU waste law at twelve separate locations throughout the country, including Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Wexford, Limerick, Carlow, Laois and Louth.

Government lawyers had claimed that these were only 'isolated incidents' and that there was no evidence of 'actual environmental harm'. The Advocate General flatly rejected these claims and in an unusually strongly worded opinion said that there were sufficient grounds for establishing that Ireland had infringed the Waste Directive in a ‘general and structural manner’ - in effect institutionalised lawbreaking. The government has, he says, infringed its obligations because, among other reasons, it has failed to ‘prevent the abandonment, dumping and uncontrolled disposal of waste, thereby endangering human health and causing environmental harm’.

This is the first time any EU Member State has been criticised for breaching EU health and environment law in a ‘general and structural manner’. The Advocate General’s opinion is likely to prove devastating to the Government’s defence strategy in this landmark case. His recommendation that Ireland should pay the legal costs of the case would see a hefty legal bill for the Irish taxpayer - another consequence of the ‘persistent widespread and serious’ failure by Government to obey and uphold a fundamental law which is supposed to protect public health and the environment.

Whether any of this makes any real difference will depend in part on whether people know about it. So far the Government Press people are playing a blinder in killing the story. The line is that this is all ancient history and they're reformed characters now...

The full text of the Advocate General’s Opinion is on the European Court’s website at www.curia.eu.int. Go here and click on the case number in the top right corner (Case C-494/01) to Access Full Text of Advocate General's Opinion.

The Dublin Grassroots Network (DGN) has called on the owners of the exclusive Berkeley Court Hotel in Ballsbridge, Dublin to cancel a major international weapons conference due to take place at the hotel on October 19th and 20th.

The 'Jane’s Less Lethal Weapons 2004 Conference - Critical Incident Intervention' conference is effectively a trade fair for tools of torture and political repression, according to the DGN, which is vowing to stop the event from going ahead.

Mick Dooley of the DGN said: "If the Jury’s Doyle Hotel group doesn’t cancel this conference, we will call on the public to come out and force it to be shut down."

"The weapons in question include electro-shock batons, stun guns, plastic bullets, Tasers, CR Gas, pepper spray and the new sonic-bombs that have been deployed to 'disperse' crowds in Iraq.

"Put simply, people who sell these tools of political repression and torture and people who want to buy them will be gathering at the Berkeley Court to do business," Dooley said. "Irish people will not tolerate that."

"The Berkeley Court conference is the first event of its kind ever to be held in Ireland," Dooley said. "Apparently this country is now being seen as a potential growth market for the arms industry. The nature of the event is extremely provocative, coming at a time when revulsion at the war machine and the arms industry is running high across the world."

Northern Ireland's appalling track record in plastic bullet deaths is being celebrated by the inclusion of Colin Burrows, a former RUC superintendent, as conference host and main speaker.

The speakers also include senior officers from the West Midlands Police, which framed the Birmingham Six and others, and from the LAPD, responsible for beating Rodney King. The CEO of Taser International Inc, a major supplier of weaponry to the occupation forces in Iraq, will also be speaking.

"Are these people being invited here to teach the Irish authorities how to brutalise people?" Dooley asked. "The organisers of this conference and the owners of the hotel need to get a loud and clear message from people in Ireland: we are not going to sit back and allow these people to peddle weapons that will be used against us in the near future."

Cavan Heritage group, Red Branch Heritage have recently released a heritage report on important archeological sites in a catchment area located in a central area of County Cavan. Cavan County Manager Mr. Jack Keyes received the first copy on Weds 22nd September.

John O’Reilly, chairman of the group, stated that the fifteen-page document has been released in a determined effort to bring forward the important issue of the protection, or lack thereof, being given to archaeological sites in the greater Denn area. The report was compiled by the group over a number of weeks and specifically targeted four sites for special attention. Among these is the Black Pig’s Dyke linear earthworks at Ardkill More Mountain, Carrickaboy - a monument believed to be up to two thousand years old, which has already being damaged by an adjoining quarry. Recently removal of topsoil by the quarry company from a newly acquired area of the mountain has taken place without planning approval from Cavan County Council. According to the report considerable damage has already being caused to the local landscape.

In its summing up the report states: “the quarry site has now become a real eyesore and this extension must not be allowed to continue and the area of this latest unauthorised work should be re-landscaped with soil in order to bring about a renewal of growth. It is time to have a serious look at the long-term future of quarrying at Ardkill More. It is quite clear this site is totally unsuitable for quarrying with regard to its elevated location and the fact that an important archeological site lies in its immediate vicinity. The quarry owners might be encouraged to consider sourcing a more suitable quarry site and phasing out their operations at Ardkill More”

Red Branch Heritage secretary Susan Hayes stated that a winding down of the quarrying operation was the only solution to the problems at Ardkill Mountain. While admitting this would cause problems for the company involved in the short term, Miss Hayes said it was the only solution that would guarantee the lasting protection of this national monument.

“How could any surveyor view the landscape even as it stands today and say the quarry was not interfering with the character of the local landscape - it’s a total disaster even as things stand and we still haven’t even received a guarantee that the surviving stretch of earthworks will not suffer a similar fate to the two hundred yards destroyed in the past.”

Spacecraft’s previous production to ‘Bleeding the System’ - ‘The Hypothetical Death of an Activist’ - was a localised to Dublin re-write of Italian Playwright Dario Fo’s celebrated farce ‘The Accidental Death of an Anarchist’. It was set in a City Centre Garda Station in the immediate aftermath of the events of 6th May 2002 when a Reclaim the Streets protest had been greeted by a spectacular police riot on Dame Street. The police riot was filmed and subsequently widely broadcast on TV to a stunned Nation. The play was at the time, and still remains, the sole theatrical representation and affirmation of the existence of a growing political culture in Ireland which identifies with the radically internationalist counter-globalisation movement.

The Fo re-write by Les Shine and Felix Ford set a high bar for Spacecraft for future productions as it was that rare beast in the theatre – a knockabout farce with satirical teeth which had the audience in no uncertain terms rolling in the aisles. It was obvious to anyone who saw it that the Spacecraft gang had hit on a novel and productive update of a surreal and satirical mode in Irish Comedy rooted in the glory days of ‘Halls Pictorial Weekly’ when broad and topical mockery of the institutions of Irish Life was not only tolerated but expected. The only question at the time was how Spacecraft would manage to live up to the expectations generated by such a successful and timely re-write of an iconic piece of theatre.

Well they have managed it in spades in the form of an original farce by Fergal Leddy set this time around May 2004 as the country gears up for a referendum on citizenship and awaits its tabloid guaranteed (seconded by McDowell) destruction at the combined hands of the WOMBLES and ‘hordes’ of pregnant immigrant mothers. I had the pleasure of catching ‘Bleeding the System’ at the final night of it’s trial run at the Convergence Festival.

It opens with the recounting of an incident witnessed by the dramatist on Dame Street in Dublin in April 2003 in the course of which a Uniformed Guard without further comment snatched a bunch of roses from an immigrant street trader and drove off. Fergal wrote an account of his attemts to lodge a complaint with the Gardai about the incident for Indymedia Ireland at the time. The play, with this symptomatic incident as a starting point, takes the form of a rapid-fire fictional recounting of the onward progress of the bunch of flowers, the Flowerseller and the Garda and is set against the backdrop of the Celtic Tiger reaching towards some kind of grim societal climax of empty, property obsessed, misanthropic and insular grandiosity.

These elements orbit and eventually spectacularly collide around Bean - the unlikely anti-hero of Bleeding the System. He is a failed impotent Irish Businessman of dubious repute with Nietzschean delusions of an imminent rebirth into grandeur, omnipotence and riches. . . .

(photo by redjade - 'Tomso is an Irish Citizen in Hiding' - the irish state has recently deported his mother to nigeria - read his story here)

The recent referendum on citizenship may have changed the constitution but in many ways this is only the start of a debate on immigration in Ireland as legislation on the issue is still in the pipeline. Currently under Irish law any child born on the island is still an Irish citizen, the status of migrants on work visas is starting to be an issue for the trade union movement and the promise by Michael McDowell to 'deal with those currently here' has yet to be fulfilled. A number of campaigning groups have now started to look at the reality for migrants currently in Ireland.

Residents against Racism, a group which has been in existence for 5 years, launched its campaign last week to seek residency and work rights for the non-national parents of Irish children. These were the people affected by the February 2003 Supreme Court judgement which removed their residency rights. These are the people that were much discussed during the recent referendum campaign. Given that the CSO fgures showed 85,000 people immigrating to ireland last year alone, the 11,000 or so people affected by this change are a small number. Mark Grehan from Residents against Racism questions even this number making the point that deportations and outward migration have already reduced the number. Included in those deportations were at least 19 Irish citizens who were deported along with their parents.

The RAR campaign is a coalition of groups including immigrant and refugee support groups and has begun seeking support from Irish political parties and trade unions. To this end a letter will be sent to all TD's in the next week and a protest is planned for the 29th of September - the day the Dail returns from the summer recess. According to Mr Grehan the change can be made by ministerial order and will result in these people being granted residency and work rights.

Next Saturday will see another group - variously billed as the African Social Forum or Amnesty for All - holding their launch in Liberty Hall. According to Joe Carolan from the group, they want Minister McDowell to live up to his commitment given on June 14th to deal with all the people currently resident in Ireland. Mr Carolan points to the example of Portugal which granted an amnesty in 1992 to non-EU citizens who were resident for 6 months or more in the country. He also stresses the importance of the right to study mentioning the case of Celine Codorean who achieved 450 points in the Irish Leaving Certificate and who was accepted into Trinity College but who now has a deportation order against her.

What both campaigns agree on is the fallacy of the notion that immigrants will have a negative impact on existing Irish workers. In this they are backed up by international research such as that conducted across Europe by the European Commission and published in July 2001 with the title 'Labour Demand, Education and the Dynamics of Social Exclusion'. In one of its conclusions this study (which covered Ireland as well as the rest of the EU) found “.. that there were no negative labour market effects of immigration on natives and hence confirm the results obtained in other countries such as the US or Canada.”