Jailed for trying to do the right thing

AS the thousands of trees she so lovingly planted on her farm in Tullamore over the last few decades begin to take on the beautiful russets, coppers and golds of autumn Teresa Tracy will have to rely on her memory to enjoy them.

She is 65, a single, retired businesswoman and she will, on the order of the High Court, be held indefinitely in Mountjoy Prison unless she concedes to ESB plans to fell 12,000 of her trees. She is an inmate — though not convicted of anything — because she has defied the ESB to protect her property and the trees the energy company wants to cut down so it can run power lines over her land.

She has not said that the ESB cannot run power lines across her land, just that they cannot run them over her land. Ms Tracy has said she will facilitate the lines as long as they are laid underground. This seems an entirely fair compromise and recognises that we all must change our ways to better protect the world around us, the world we are all just passing through.

Ms Tracy asked the ESB to do no more than follow EU recommendations and preserve the beauty of the countryside by hiding away what can be terrible eyesores. The suggestion that workers started knocking trees as soon as Ms Treacy was jailed adds a deeply sinister note to the affair.

Of course cost is and issue — the ESB claims burying lines costs eight times what it costs to run them overhead — but monetary cost is not the only one at issue. Maybe we’ve become so used to the hideousness of some of the power lines stretching across our country that we cannot imagine — much less remember — how beautiful rural Ireland was before their arrival.

As more and more wind farms are built this is an issue that will become heated as energy firms will need to link wind farms with the national grid. In nearly every instance that will mean new power lines and pylons draped across what is now beautiful countryside.

In that context it would be worthwhile to consider how the law is so very heavily stacked in favour of the power companies and how very difficult it must be for any individual, no matter how heroic, to stand against them. It may have been acceptable once, when we were more naive and deferential, for a power company to dismiss an individual’s legitimate concerns by merely waving a statutory leave of way at them, but no longer.

The ability to develop essential infrastructure quickly is vital in any functioning economy, but that does not mean power companies and other utilities cannot be challenged. Many other counties have arbitration systems that resolve these issues relatively quickly without having to go to court, so why not here?

The prospect of privatisation is a huge disincentive for the ESB to lay cables underground as anything that adds to costs will make it less attractive to investors. That does not mean the company should not bury some lines as they erect or renew them. That would greatly enhance our environment and the company’s place in society.

When he sent Ms Tracy to jail, Judge Daniel Herbert warned that she was “setting herself against the Constitution” and that if she was permitted to continue to do so “we may as well sink into anarchy”. It would be easier just to laugh at his Rumpole remarks but for the fact that it is this blind submission to legalised bullies that has us in the mess we are in. And the terrible fact that this state has imprisoned one of its citizens for trying to do the right thing.