teresa treacy - still in jail

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oldnick

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I'm starting to feel a bit guilty about doing nothing about this person. I thought that chucking her in prison for a few days was bad enough ,but that surely she'd be out soon.
It's now two weeks.

I haven't been to a demonstration since student days- CND in the sixties- but feel a numb horror about what the authorities are doing in this case.

Not sure what i can do but surely this is so wrong.
 
She's in for contempt, so she decides herself when she wants to be released. She will be released as soon as she pruges her contempt, which, I image, means telling the Judge that she will abide by the ruling of the Court.
 
While I have no inside knowledge of the case (only what I read in the papers) but if everyone took her attitude with regard to ESB power lines there would be a large area of the country unable to get electricty.

Maybe there are other things at play here but that is how I read it.
 

Or the flip side could be that if everyone accepted what the powers that be told them then the country could end up in the mire, as it is now for instance.
 
What does ajapale mean by "link" ?

This story has appeared in every Irish newspaper in the last two weeks ,has been on news programmes on RTE and TV3. There have been demonstrations outside Mountjoy and on the lady's estate in Tullamore, all widely reported.
 

It was the first I had heard of it, so appreciated the link
 
This story was on the radio this morning. I find this type of story very unconfortable. Of course I feel sorry for the woman and her family. But there are two sides to every story. The article in the Daily Mail is very one sided, and emotive. If every landowner in Ireland said that they want pylons and electric wires removed from their land, if every landowner can refuse to sell land when new roads are to be built where would the country be? The new road into Sligo town is a great road for a lot of reasons. However my parents home which is about 100 meters away from it used to be a very quiet house. The difference in the noise is very noticeable on those lazy Sunday evenings spent sitting in the garden. I don't like it, but I accept it. I know our disturbance is not of the same magnitude as this lady is expected to tolerate, but I don't think that the landowner is always right. Every case must be judged on its facts. This case was judged on its facts, and it was judged that she either relents or goes to jail. She choose to go to jail. If we disrespect our courts, what kind of society will we have?
 
If you want to see where unbridled legal power leads - after due considerations of course (but by who, and with what agenda?) - look at Chapter Three of the Land Conveyancing and Law Reform Act 2009.
 
onq I don't suppose you could paraphrase briefly the content of that chapter? I tried reading it there (on the attorneygeneral.ie site) and I can't make head nor tail of what it is trying to say!
 
Ceist Beag said:
onq I don't suppose you could paraphrase briefly the content of that chapter?
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Lads by all means do that but start a new thread to discuss it! Keep this LoS stream to discuss that unfortunate lady who is unable/unwilling to purge her contempt of court.
 
I wonder would she be in jail right now if had a different ethnic origin?
 
One poster asks what will be the consequences if landowners refuse to sell for needed projects. As far as I know there is no compensation from ESB for destroying her trees as is the case with CPOs . ESB can just come in and plant pylons and destroy trees - accept it or else go to jail. (However, as I write this I feel I must be wrong -it seems so unfair- and will happily stand corrected.)


Most European states now insist that cables (of any sort) go underground. Even here in new estates one will see far less overhead cables/wires compared to older areas. Where I live there are TV cables, phone lines, ESB lines - masses of spaghetti above gardens and streets.
Why does ESB still insist on large pylons and overhead cables, and if it is really necessary should not there be some sort of compensation -either fiscally or by replanting mature trees?
And there is perhaps a difference between pylons being erected on empty fields and going through carefully planted woodland.

Locking up an old woman who is otherwise completly law-abiding and harmless and who has worked and saved all her life, mainly spending money on trees (which Ireland desperately needs, having one of the lowest percent of forestry in europe) seems barmy.

Quoting the law makes me shudder. In this country gays were recently criminals; selling contraceptives, copies of Playboy, even some of Joyce's works were all outlawed. "Because it's the law" does not make something just.

Like most of us I only glanced at the first news articles about this case. Boring, i thought. But the more I read about this, the more I believe this is a case of stupid blind obedience to the letter of the law with no consideration of real justice.
 

i know you said somewhere that you only read the headlines - -- here is a link to a story ...

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/100498

seems like teresa tracey was offered approx 150k to let the esb access her lands.
 
seems like teresa tracey was offered approx 150k to let the esb access her lands.
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Money has nothing to do with it, she was standing up for her principals, nothing wrong with that.
 
I agree with "because it is the law" doen't mean it is right, and I would suggest that some of the bankruptcy laws don't result in a just outcome. However, the law is correct much more often than not. The real question is whether it is correct in this instance? I have yet to see a reason why it is not.

Why not bury the power cables? Because I think that can be up to 10 to 20 times more expensive than pylons. How do you bury pylons through a woodland? By veering left and right of the trees? By digging a tunnel under them? It is complicated.

I live in the west of Ireland. I was recently talking to a friend who works in sustainable energy. We were talking about the potential of wave and wind energy in Mayo, and how it could contribute to the national grid. However there is a practical problem. The grid and pylons in Mayo cannot support the generation of massive amounts of electricity and subsequent supply to the rest of the country. In order to build such a network, it would take a staggering 8 years on average to get planning permission. 8 years! This is mostly because it would involve powerlines running over land owned by many many people, and any one of them has the ability to both hold up such a project and (rightly) stop the proposal in the planning stages if such cessation is justified.

Putting the network in place is difficult. But power is needed for homes, schools, hospitals, factories, creating jobs, and creating an environment that attract foreign investment, etc.

For the sake of fairness, for the sake of balancing the protection of people's property with the necessity of building the required infrastructure in this country every case must be judged individually with regard to the details of that case.

In this instance the planning authorities ruled in favour of the development. In this instance the court ruled in favour of the ESB. The planning authorities and courts are not always correct (Henrehan vs Merck, Sharpe and Dohme being a famous example), but for the most part they are correct.

Until I hear one reason why this lady has been wronged, I for one am going to assume that the courts are correct. I won't be influenced by newspaper articles that tend to make the subject overly emotional, and make a people's hero out of the person who stands against the will of a corporation or court. Is this the moral battle of a David vs a Goliath or is it just a person being stubborn and gaining sympathy because of her age and her otherwise law biding demeanour? I don't know.
 
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