'They shouldn't be part of this government' Leitrim councillor speaks out on local TDs and fracking

A Leitrim Councillor has spoken out after local TD's supported the Government's decision to proceed with plans to build a liquefied natural gas terminal at Shannon.

Speaking to Oceanfm, Cllr Eddie Mitchell said: "It's not OK for Sinn Fein or Marian Harkin to be silent about it or Eamon Scanlon or Frank Feighan to be silent about it. Those two men helped Tony McLoughlin when he banned fracking. The gas is still there."

He added: "Eamon Scanlon should be talking to Darragh O'Brien and getting him to publicly clarify that there is no support for private liquefied natural gas (LNG) but the Taoiseach came out at the weekend and said he couldn't have LNG quick enough. They shouldn't be part of this government. Why is Marion Harkin supporting this government? The people that voted for her  to bring in changes to the Arbitration Act; they didn't support her to remove Irish neutrality. Why is she supporting that government? It's not OK."

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He went to say that "in the past, there was great leadership shown by Eamon Scanlon and Frank Feighan on fracking. Before the elections, Marion Harkin did work on the LNG and we thought she was going to be there for us on that issue."

He continued: "Our TDs in north Leitrim understand the importance of protecting areas like Glenfarne and Kilty and keeping fracking out of there."

Cllr Mitchell has been raising concerns over fracked gas for a number of years and addressed a crowd at a protest outside the Dáil earlier this year. 

He said: "Now we are removing the Triple Lock, fast-tracking large-scale infrastructure, making deals with corporations that can sue the Irish state; we're agreeing that if a corporation gets a finding in an international court that the Irish government will facilitate that; the affect of that is we won't be able to stop big corporates coming in and extracting resources from here."

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He went on to say that the "narrative is that we have to keep the lights on and build housings but the reality is that's not what's going on. Over 21% of our electricity is going to data centres."

He concluded by saying that the government of "walking away from climate action."