Imagine getting an electricity bill for close to €6,000 when you were expecting something close to €300.

Tomorrow's Mayo Echo will be carrying an interesting story on page 8.

It seems that Shell have been helping themselves to more resources, this time at the expense of fishermen.

For the last 9 months, Shell have been enjoying free electricity at the Ballyglass pier, at the north end of Belmullet. They illegally tapped into the BIM supply at the meter at the pier. Shell claims to have had an agreement at the pier whereby they would pay for all the electricity used there. But they cannot say who they had the agreement with and everyone else is saying there was no agreement.

Check out page 8.

There is currently an ongoing safety audit at the pier to ensure that Shell's illegal connection has put nobody at risk.

The Gardaí have been contacted and surely an arrest and a prosecution must follow?

It is illegal for anyone other than an authorised member of the ESB metering department to work on a meter. That's ever before one considers that Shell added close to €5,000 to a bill that normally would have worked out at something like €300 per quarter.

If this had been a domestic situation and a person had tapped into his neighbour's supply, there'd have been an arrest already and a file would be winging its way to the DPP.

That ain't all they're tappin' into

tonys wrote:

Hermes wrote:

Imagine getting an electricity bill for close to €6,000 when you were expecting something close to €300.

Tomorrow's Mayo Echo will be carrying an interesting story on page 8.

It seems that Shell have been helping themselves to more resources, this time at the expense of fishermen.

For the last 9 months, Shell have been enjoying free electricity at the Ballyglass pier, at the north end of Belmullet. They illegally tapped into the BIM supply at the meter at the pier. Shell claims to have had an agreement at the pier whereby they would pay for all the electricity used there. But they cannot say who they had the agreement with and everyone else is saying there was no agreement.

Check out page 8.

There is currently an ongoing safety audit at the pier to ensure that Shell's illegal connection has put nobody at risk.

The Gardaí have been contacted and surely an arrest and a prosecution must follow?

It is illegal for anyone other than an authorised member of the ESB metering department to work on a meter. That's ever before one considers that Shell added close to €5,000 to a bill that normally would have worked out at something like €300 per quarter.

If this had been a domestic situation and a person had tapped into his neighbour's supply, there'd have been an arrest already and a file would be winging its way to the DPP.

Outrageous, 10 years behind bars would be too good for them and who’s going to pay for the arse torn out of the protesters trousers when they were doing nothing more than defending the national interest by illegally climbing fences, a full time 24 hour a day Friday to Wednesday job if ever there was one.

Heroes all, men & women who wouldn’t sully themselves by collecting the capitalists pigs dole, I ask again who will pay for the torn trouser arse?

We can be absolutely sure that if there was an arse hanging out of a pair of trousers, that there'd be an arrest and a prosecution. So long as it was an arse belonging to a protester.

Can we get back on topic now?

I think the mains connections to meter boxes are secured by a cover which is affixed by screws and then tamper sealed by a wire crimped with a lead button by a special tool which leaves a mark on the lead button.

To tap this mains supply would most likely require the seal to be broken. This is most likely a crime and I can't think of any reason why a prosecution would not follow.

There are two seals on every meter. There's one on the cover of the electrical supply into and out of the meter and there's another one that ensures that the meter itself is not tampered with (this is called the Rathmines seal).

Nobody has the pliers capable of putting a security seal on the supply in and supply out part of the meter and indeed the ESB has an investigational department (Meter Security) charged with finding illegal supplies.

There are a number of issues here:

i. Did Shell's contractor tamper with the security seals on the meter?

ii. If the contractor did not tamper with the seals, does this mean that he worked on a live installation?

iii. Who signed the completion certificate?

On top of these issues, there are questions that need asking.

i. Who is it exactly that Shell are claiming gave them permission to tap into the supply.

ii. Why were the ESB not called to meter the new supply.

iii. Who exactly within Shell authorised the contractor to tap into the supply.

iv. Why did the contractor comply? (He would have known exactly what it was that he was getting into.)

v. The pier is currently being safety audited, who is carrying this out and are the ESB involved? (We have heard that BIM are currently allowing the installation to remain - they should not have a say in this - it is the ESB's job to say whether the installation needs to be uprooted.)

Damn good questions Hermes.

I read the Mayo Echo article and it says the BIM are doing a Safety aduit. Where the feck are the ESB ?

Also, if they used 6 grand worth of leccy in one quarter, chances are that the installation was completely unsuitable for the massive additional load.

My mind is boggling. Why did BIM not insist on the unauthorised connection being removed immediately ?

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Damn good questions Hermes.

I read the Mayo Echo article and it says the BIM are doing a Safety aduit. Where the feck are the ESB ?

Also, if they used 6 grand worth of leccy in one quarter, chances are that the installation was completely unsuitable for the massive additional load.

My mind is boggling. Why did BIM not insist on the unauthorised connection being removed immediately ?

There are so many questions that the mind could do little else but be boggled.

I'm assuming that the contractor was not stupid enough to go at the seals and thus worked on a live installation. He should thus not be allowed to work anywhere else ever again and all of his past contracts need to be investigated (at least by the ESB).

What we're looking at here is two installations, now running in parallel from the one meter. We've two separate customers and it is quite impossible to tell who owes what as it's the one meter that informs how much electricity has been used. Hence Shell's claim that they'd initially agreed to pay for the whole pier - they were well aware of the implications of running a dual installation from the one meter.

And as you say EVM, it may well be the case that the supply is not up to coping with the demand - this is a massive increase. I think it was a bit amateurish for the journalist who wrote the article, not to have contacted the ESB to record what they had to say on the matter. Not only that, Shell should have initially contacted the ESB and informed them of the estimated increase in load. Had this happened, the rest of the job would have been done right, so we can say with a high degree of certainty, that the ESB knew nothing of the project.

Financially speaking, this isn't much of a story, particularly in the current climate. But with regard to health and safety alone, this is a scandal and a half. Particularly so when one considers Shell's health and safety record.

It remains to be seen now whether an attempt will be made to sweep this mess under the carpet and to identify the cleaners.