BERTIE AHERN recently commemorated the flight of the earls, an event that left ordinary Irish people without their leaders who left and never came back.

ENVIRONMENT Minister Dick Roche recently launched a study of important battle sites and vowed to amend the National Monuments Act to protect them, saying: “Battlefields … can increase our knowledge and understanding of momentous events in Irish history.”

THE wanton destruction by the National Roads Authority of important sites of natural and historical heritage in the Gabhra Valley and around Lismullin and Rath Lugh near Tara is unbelievable.

THE only ‘wow’ factor in Environment Minister Dick Roche’s recent announcement of the new Heritage Trust is that he understands the meaning of heritage at all. He didn’t at Tara.

IN the week leading up the celebration of the 1916 Rising, the Taoiseach urges us to begin "a great national conversation" on what it means to be Irish 90 years later.

WHY does the Taoiseach want to push ahead with the twice-tolled M3 above any other motorway?

THE Taoiseach said recently that “in other countries they just get on with things. If you take a pencil and account for things like snails and archaeology, you will never do anything”.

THE Taoiseach again declares his party to be “the republican party” in the wake of the historic announcement by the IRA. What would his republican ancestors think of the Government’s decision to put a motorway through Tara?

THE Government and Meath County Council seem to have a two-forked approach to the development of the Royal County.

Top academics from across the world gathered on the historic Hill of Tara today to highlight the reasons plans for the M3 motorway should be abandoned.

PLANNING disputes regularly end in curses but the raging row over the M3 and the Hill of Tara may have been caused by a curse, according to some opponents of the motorway plan.

THE recent announcement by Environment Minister Dick Roche that the tolled M3 motorway will proceed is probably one of the worst planning decisions ever made by an Irish Minister for the Environment.

The Save Tara-Skryne Valley group has vowed to take legal action if Environment Minister Dick Roche approves the planned route of the controversial M3 motorway in Co Meath.

A group protesting at the current planned route of the M3 which was denied an opportunity to appear before the Oireachtas Transport Committee will now be allowed to make a submission, it emerged today.

A campaign group handed over a 10,000-strong petition to the Government today warning them to back away from constructing a motorway near the historic seat of the High Kings of Ireland.

Actor Stuart Townsend joined environmental campaigners today in a bid to stop the construction of a major motorway close to the historic seat of the High Kings of Ireland.

HERITAGE groups yesterday accused Environment Minister Martin Cullen of failing to protect national monuments.

THE plan to run a new motorway between the hills of Tara and Skryne in Co Meath is to be challenged in the High Court unless a compromise can be reached within the next week.