Donegal battles uranium giants

Press, 12 July 1980, Page 14

Donegal battles uranium giants

By

JUDITH JUDD

ill London

The inhabitants of a beautiful and remote corner of Donegal are calling on their fellow countrymen to join battle against the multi - national companies prospecting for uranium in the Irish bogs. The scattered hamlets around Fintown, where there are strong indications that uranium could be mined economically, are pitting themselves ag°' .;t the Irish Government, which granted the companies’ licences, and the European Community. Europe uses 42 per cent of the world’s uranium but

produces only 4 per cent of it. Sixty per cent of the companies’ exploration costs are being paid by the European Comm..nity. The stakes are so high that the fighting has already become dirty. The Irish police are investigating a campaign • against Brian Flannery, a science teacher who chairs Fintown AntiUranium Committee.

Flannery’s wife, Margaret, has received anonymous postcards warning "Beware traitors” and in May the district was flooded with leaflets. “School-leaverS and the

unemployed.” they read, “apply to Flannery and the Donegal Anti-Uranium Committee for emigration tickets to the United States and England.” Feeling runs equally high on the other sic!?. One of the drilling machines was put out of action by sabotage. Flannery disapproves of sabotage and is sympathetic about Donegal’s need for jobs but the main concern of his committee is health.

The two co, ipanies drilling in two corridors about 20 miles by six miles near Fintown are Irish Base Metals and Munster Base Metals. No-one knows the

precise effect of their prospecting which involves drilling 300 ft into the ground and cutting trenches up to Bft deep. Flannery says that in Donegal it is almost impossible to drill anywhere which is not close to somebody’s water supply, either wells or small pools. He is concerned about the release into rhe water and soil of radioactive products. The companies say. that drilling causes no more disturbance of uranium than ploughing and road-building. They stress that it may be many years before they know whether mining is worth while.

The protesters believe the companies are confident — Irish Base Metals has already spent 8800,000 on exploration — and they say that economic pressures will make the mining of uranium inevitable. Flannery says: “This is an area of farming and tourism and we are afraid it will be turned into one of heavy industry. Some uranium has to be dug by open-cast mining, which we know from what has happened in America can destroy the environment.”

The companies say that, with modern technology, it is possible to protect the en-

vironment from the effects of mining. The companies say that they are being seriously hampered by the refusal of farmers to ai.ow them on their land. They plan an “education” programme ta show that prospecting it harmless. Flannery looks hopefully to the Orkneys, where uranium mining has already been halted by a similar campaign — but the Orkneys are affluent. In jobhungry Donegal, there is » saying that they would work for the Devil himself. Copyright London Observer Service.