THE GARDA has incurred more than €14.5 million in additional costs such as overtime and subsistence payments in policing the Shell oil refinery site at Bellanaboy, Co Mayo, since 2006.
Minister for Justice Alan Shatter said the figure did not include the basic salaries paid to gardaí who had policed the site but that, while “deeply regrettable”, the extra spend on policing was “absolutely necessary”.
He said this was because some of the protesters had engaged in acts of public disorder and damaged property. Mr Shatter was responding to a parliamentary question from Sinn Féin TD for Meath West Peadar Tóibín.
Mr Shatter said €9.1 million had been spent on Garda overtime and allowances at the site, with the highest bill of €2.7 million coming in 2007 – a year in which policing operations cost a total of €4.9 million at the site. Some €4.7 million has been spent on travel and subsistence payments to gardaí and a further €473,979 has been incurred through PRSI payments as well as €307,443 on miscellaneous expenses.
The cost of policing the site has fallen significantly in recent years – to €620,326 in 2010 and €913,729 last year – as private firm IRMS has provided security at the site.
According to figures provided by Mr Shatter’s predecessor, Dermot Ahern, in relation to policing at Bellanaboy, a further €810,550 was spent between August and the end of December 2005, bringing the total cost of the Garda presence at the site to some €15.3 million.
Mr Shatter said some of the demonstrators were involved in a form of “protest tourism”.
“Such action cannot be tolerated and the Garda presence is there to prevent it,” he said.
Terence Conway of the Shell to Sea campaign yesterday denied there was any “protest tourism” at Rossport.
“The Rossport Solidarity Camp is here at the invitation of the local community and I couldn’t speak higher of those people at the camp,” he said. Mr Conway, a native of the parish of Kilcommon in north Mayo, said the protests would continue.