As events unfold in Venezuela, with the US appropriating natural resources to bring its people prosperity (by selling them to American oil companies), Omagh-based international mining company Dalradian must look on with envy as it enters its seventeenth year of financial failure in Northern Ireland.
Dalradian has been a colossal failure in the Sperrin Mountains
Be under no illusion, Dalradian’s investors would take the Sperrin Mountains, Venezuela-style, in a heartbeat if they thought it possible. However, belatedly and at a considerable financial cost, the hedge-funders now understand Northern Ireland isn’t South America and that tyrannical, tinpot tactics won’t cut it in this democracy.
Going nowhere fast, Dalradian falls between two stools in its quest to enrich itself at the expense of West Tyrone.
The outdated colonial playbook for buying up a community has proven worthless in the face of well-organised local opposition, who saw the play from day one.
Secondly, the attempt to industrialise the Sperrins can’t meet the minimum environmental standards in law.
With community activists understanding the planning system better than slothful politicians and inept civil servants, every move by the establishment to facilitate Dalradian is counterchecked. Unlike the last major scandal in Northern Ireland, there are no RHI-type off-ramp options to allow the deranged proposal to gain traction.
The scales of justice also refuse to tip in Dalradian’s favour as protection of the common good, particularly in environmental cases, increasingly prevail via the courts. Meanwhile, citizens see the Northern Ireland Executive’s unfettered support for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), at any cost, exposed as an exercise that trades their health and wellbeing to fatten immoral speculators.
Political cowardice
Cowardice of that nature reflects the political acumen of MLA’s who instinctively know the cost to themselves for inviting a plague into the community will be settled sooner rather than later by the public.
In 2026 goldmining licences are expiring, environmental surveys will be outdated, legal obligations will remain unfulfilled, and even Dalradian’s camp in the Sperrins must be dismantled and returned to a green field site in the next short while.
All of the above points to a harsh reality for anyone foolish enough to buy into the fairytale about digging up untold riches in the Sperrins.
The question now is not if the goldminers leave Northern Ireland, but when?
Having relocated from South America to Northern Ireland some years ago believing political circumstances would favour their ploy, Dalradian would be well advised to avoid returning to that region and retreat to the hellish US. The company should also understand that regardless of who wears them, American jackboots will be resisted in Greencastle, Caracas, or anywhere else in the world these awful people try and impose themselves.
Featured image via the Canary
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