“PECPLE DIED Al’ WHIDDY ISLAND IN JANUARY IN THE…”

5C PECPLE DIED Al’ WHIDDY ISLAND IN JANUARY IN THE BIGGEST INDUSTRIAL DISASTER IN RECENT IRISH HISTORY, tHE 50, CREWMEN Or THE FRENCH TANKER BETELGEUSE AND IRISH TERMINAL WORKERS, WERE KILLED BY SUCESSIVE /ZRISH GOVERNMENT'S POLICY OF MAKING THE 26 COUNTIES A HAVEN FOR DIRTY AND DANGEROUS MULTI-NATIONAL <IRMS THAT MOST CTHER COUNTRIES WOULDN'T HAVE.

The Betelgeuse disaster was predictable. From the beginning the Whiddy story has been a long saga of the Dublin Govt. turning a blind eye to the totally inadaquate safety and anti-pollution measures at the terminal run by the giant multi-national Gulf Oil company. In the first six years of Gulf's operations at Whiddy there were two dozen reported oil spillages polluting Bantry bay, the biggest one in (ctober I974 pumping 650.000 gallons of crude oil into the bay and another one three months later spilling 115,000 gallons.

The reason Gulf could get away With this was that as 4 result of a deal with Fianna Fail, there was no harbour authority to enforce safety regulations for the first six years. Eventually in 1975, the Government was forced, as a face-saving measure, to establish a harbour authority but it was only a front for the Gulf Company. The result was the lack of safety measures which doomed the fifty workers.

What did the Irish people get out of this long record of criminal negligence? Gulf O11 provided about I50 jobs in Bantry, they paid no harbour dues and it is reckoned that in their first five years they paid the Irish authorities only some £35,000 in rates. In the same period it was reckoned they paid off their capital investment and made a profit of over £40 million. The oil offloaded at Bantry isn't even used in Ireland: its crude oil which is simply stored for delivery to refineries in Britain and Europe.

Guif came to Whiddy simply because nowhere else in Europe would have allowed them to operate with such inadequate safety measures - which meant that Gulf saved themselves alot of money. They are only one of many multinational firms which Irish governments have allowed to operate dangerous processes with totally inadequate precautions. Another example is Asahi in Killala whicn is transporting highly danger >us chemicals right across Ireland ‘and pumping toxic waste int> Killale bay. Yet another is ‘Raybestos Manhattan which has peen dumping danger dus asbestos waste beside residential arees in Co. Cork. Potentially most Gangerous >.f all is the Government's plan in ieague witn the U.S. Westinghouse Corporation to builc a nuclear reactor at Carnsore Point.

There is to be an officie. enquiry into the Whiddy Island cisaster but ail the indications are that it will be a whitewash. If we €on't want alot more Whiddy Isiands then we ust force the trade unions to fight for a full and open enquiry into the disaster and stop the process of turning ‘Ireland into a dumping ground for all the poisonous rubbish of multi-national capitalism.

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