Action group wants dig details made public

Neans McSweeney, South East Correspondent

That’s according to the Save Viking Waterford Action Group. It says little or nothing is known about work carried out at the Woodstown Viking Site, despite a recent claim by former Environment Minister, Martin Cullen, that over 5 million had been spent on archaeological work on the N25 Waterford bypass site to date.

The group has examined the website of ACS Ltd, the private firm contracted ACS Ltd, the private firm contracted for the archaeological survey work on the N25. The website, www.acsltd.ie, has two sections on their work in Waterford listed under ‘company presentation’ and ‘projects’ respectively. The first notice speaks of testing 10km of roads and ‘resolving’ 24 sites. In the second notice, the firm is investigating 44km of roads.

Neither notice makes any reference to the discovery of Woodstown, despite it being the most famous discovery made along the route of the N25.

SVWAG chairperson, Dr Catherine Swift, said the omission of Woodstown on the ACS website is extremely worrying.

“Enquiry has shown that no report has been lodged with the Department of the Environment dealing with the 2004 excavation of Woodstown carried out by ACS.

“Ten months after that excavation ceased, we have no statement by the excavators, bar a short, preliminary notice in the local archaeological journal DECIES which was published last autumn,” she said.

A spokesperson from ACS said reports it had received E5 million to carry out the work were wrong.

“The figure is inaccurate and over inflated. All of the work has been carried out in accordance with every acceptable practice.

“All our the work carried out is done under licence to the Department of the Environment and we are monitored very closely by the NRA,” he said.

He added that post-excavation reports were time consuming.

“We only finished up in October last year so we now have to sit down and compile the reports which usually take between a year and two years to complete,” he said.

However, SVWAG insists that even if ACS received a portion of the 5m of public money, it needs to provide some information as to how that money has been spent.

“The senior archaeologist for the NRA recently stated that the purpose of archaeology is to inform citizens about their past. Otherwise we are spending millions of euros for little or no return. SVWAG is calling on ACS and Waterford City Council to state clearly just what we have gained from the expenditure of this money,” Dr Swift said.