The wall that costs taxpayers €100,000 a week

COMPROMISE is still possible to save both Carrickmines Castle and the South Eastern Motorway, conservationists who challenged the route of the road project have insisted.

The two sides in the dispute were last night assessing the implications of yesterday's Supreme Court order to stop work at the site of the medieval castle ruins pending a full High Court hearing on the issues involved.

But while supporters of the €500m motorway warned the long-awaited road project could be delayed indefinitely by the legal wrangle, the Carrickminders who took the case to the Supreme Court said there remained a sensible and acceptable solution to the impasse.

"This can be a win-win situation. If the road skirts the edge of the castle site as we wanted all along instead of going through it, there is no reason why you can't finish the road and preserve the site," said spokesman, Ruadhan MacEoin.

Labour's environment spokesman, Deputy Eamon Gilmore, also said the road could go ahead if the developers were willing to accept they had picked the wrong route.

"The simple solution is to shift the roundabout. The Minister should make an order to that effect. There would be some delay in getting this part of the road redesigned but it's the more straightforward solution to what is otherwise going to become a very protracted legal dispute."

Green Party MEP Patricia McKenna appealed to Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council to enter immediate talks with the Carrickminders on the alternative proposals they had put forward for resolving the problem.

"It is not the protesters who are delaying the construction of the M50. It is the Government, the National Roads Authority and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council. If they had taken the location of the castle into account when planning the road, we could have avoided this mess altogether," she said.

An early date is being sought for the High Court hearing as Dun Laoghaire Rathdown claim the delay is costing €100,000 a week in disruption fees to the main contractor but at best it is likely to be weeks before a judge can be appointed to the case and judgment after hearing is likely to be reserved for a further period of time.

A Courts Service spokesman said yesterday most judicial review cases got on a scheduled date within eight to 12 weeks but if urgency was pleaded, it was possible to get a hearing sooner.

Yesterday's judgment by the three-member Supreme Court came in a 27 page document delivered by Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman who found the Carrickminders had sufficient grounds to seek the suspension of works at the Carrickmines Castle site pending further investigation of the legal issues involved.

The protestors had argued that the removal of parts of the castle walls to make way for the motorway amounted to interference with a national monument which was only permitted under licence, in very rare circumstances and in compliance with strict conditions.

They argued there were questions about the nature of the licence held by the developers and the level of compliance with the conditions which suggested breaches of the National Monuments Act.

Mr Justice Hardiman said while the defendants contended the castle remains were not a national monument, they had failed to provide expert evidence to contradict the opinion of medieval scholar Dr Sean Duffy of Trinity College Dublin that they did constitute a national monument.

"Plainly there is scope for differences of opinion as to whether the preservation of any particular monument is a matter of national importance," said Mr Justice Hardiman.

"But it is essential to the resolution of the present case to note that the strongly expressed and closely argued conclusion of Dr. Duffy to the effect that it is a national monument is uncontradicted by any expert evidence."