Gas pipes everywhere — so why the protest?

I WISH someone would explain exactly what the Corrib gas pipeline protest is about.

The risk of danger from a gas pipeline is close to zero.

There are numerous gas pipelines under the North Sea making landfall in Britain.

Furthermore, there are underground gas pipelines all over the world and there has never been a disaster.

The gas and oil industry has exceptionally high safety and environmental standards compared to other industries in Ireland. If there was a leak, safety valves would shut down the pipeline immediately.

Once the pipeline is installed and buried you would hardly know it was there.

A gas terminal produces no noise or pollution and, once built, needs little traffic access.

Like those who protest against nuclear and wind farms, there appears to be an inability to make quantitative assessments and comparisons of the risks, benefits and environmental problems with the alternatives.

Unless these people wish to go back to a medieval existence, and there is nothing wrong with that, their concerns seem misguided. We need to choose the least bad solution.

Having said that, I can understand opposition to anything which will negatively affect people’s environment, be it a house, a factory, a road or a plant.

This is the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) conundrum — the need for gas pipelines, incinerators, motorways, etc, is accepted by most, but few people want them in or even near their own backyard.

The only fair solution would be to compensate people for loss of amenity, fall in property values, etc, and charge the costs to the project, in addition to the notional costs of air pollution, accidents and other externalised costs which are borne by the country as a whole and which should be paid to the Exchequer.

Michael Job

Rossnagrena

Glengarriff

Co Cork