IN the run-up to the general election it’s perhaps timely to consider the appalling lack of respect for our heritage which has been continually displayed by the Government, in particular since 2002 when Martin Cullen and his successor Dick Roche held the Environment portfolio.

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.

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.