IT is depressing that only now, somewhat late in the day, Meath County Council has united in its opposition to the twice-tolled M3.

I WAS delighted to learn that the government, following a recent report by UNESCO and the world conservation body IUCN, has at last recognised the importance of Tara as a World Heritage Site, and reversed its decision to build a major component of national infrastructure in the area.

Experts on gardening, archaeology, the Irish language and the arts are among those appointed to the Heritage Council today.

WE strongly reject the implication that we have ‘hoodwinked’ the public into thinking that the proposed road goes over the Hill of Tara, contained in recent testimony to the Oireachtas Committee on Transport.

OVER the centuries some of Ireland’s most eminent scholars - John O’Donovan, George Petrie, R.A.S. Macalister, to name but a few - have engaged with the history and archaeology of Tara, and its myth and legend.

WHILE Claire O’Sullivan (‘On the Road to Nowhere,’ Irish Examiner, November 1) paints an unsettling picture of gross mismanagement coupled with the squandering of billions of Irish taxpayers’ money in the ‘interest’ of the nation’s infrastructure, it is all too easy to overlook an equally disturbing hidden cost — the ‘collateral’ damage to our unique and vulnerable cultural heritage.

WITH the announcement of a €30 million bill to rid the Tara landscape of 38 archaeological sites in the way of the M3 motorway, the NRA is finally beginning to admit to the true impact of this ill-conceived development.

TARA is under threat. The National Roads Authority continues to perpetuate the fiction that Tara is confined to the cluster of monuments on the hilltop. This is not the case.

I READ with interest Donal Hickey’s Planet Cars article (Irish Examiner, March 15) and his comment that “Ireland still has time to learn from the mistakes made in America.”