Plea made to save last remains of oldest bog road

Conservationists are pleading for emergency action to stop destruction of the country’s oldest known bog road.

Much of the 3,000-year-old wooden roadway or togher, discovered intact at Mayne Bog in Co Westmeath in 2005, was destroyed during commercial peat extraction over the summer.

An Taisce has criticised the National Monuments Service for failing to secure a preservation order for the Bronze Age site and is now calling on Heather Humphreys, the arts and heritage minister who has responsibility for the service, to make an urgent order on what’s left of it.