I thought that living in beautiful Inishowen, with plenty of flags on the map for scenery, beaches, conservation, protection, heritage, wild fowl sanctuaries, oyster beds, and protected water sources, we were safe from the gold seekers.
I thought that tourism, farming, fishing, small, innovative and developing businesses, were the foundations of our economy, culture and lives.
But a Klondike of global wealth seekers have been here too. They know the gold reserves here will one day, if they get their way, reap them a handsome profit. The mining industry, like oil, plays a rough long-shot game.
The Irish Government prides itself in handing out over 4,000 prospecting licences for mining minerals.
One quarter of Ireland’s land mass has been photographed, pricked, prodded and drilled in the search for gold,silver,lead, gypsum, lithium. It is government policy to overtly welcome mining as a ‘green’ clean national industry. ‘Inward investment’ and ‘wealth creation’ shouts the promotional material. Corporation tax and generous allowances offset costs. Take the gold, put it in a bank vault, make what you will of it says our government.
The industry has a terrible reputation globally of leaving behind broken promises of jobs, and environmental pollution. Expect desecrated and blasted land, polluted rivers, air we can’t breathe. Expect the aspirational Climate Change plans to be trod underfoot.
Arkle Resources , the prospectors here in Inishowen, at a secret location somewhere near Quigley’s Point, have applied for a second licence saying they have found enough gold to get excited about. It’s on the same geological fault as Greencastle in the Sperrin Mountains in my native County Tyrone.
What cheers me up in these dark days is the resilience of Inishowen people. In the last two weeks they have shouted deep and loud to make known their displeasure at the inadequacy of the redress scheme for Mica which has led to homes crumbling and disintegrating around them. In south Inishowen the community objected to the planning application for an Asphalt plant which will have health and environmental implications for us all as far away as Derry city and county. The county council planning department approved the application. The community is now appealing that decision.
Over 500 have objected to the gold prospecting licence. All this uproar during Covid. That says something for the strength of feeling of locals to what is going on around them.
Mining is a dirty, sulphurous, dangerous industry. Its wealth goes to the few, somewhere far, far away. Its excreta suffocates people and the earth.
I’m with the people of Greencastle and all the other communities around Ireland who are resisting gold mining.
Save Inishowen from Gold Mining Group.
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