Petition calls for motorway to avoid historic site

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.

The Save Tara Skryne Valley group threatened legal action to prevent the building of the M3 motorway close to the Hill of Tara in Co Meath.

But environmental campaigner Vincent Salafia said they were loathe to make that move.

“I do want to stress we are trying to avoid that eventuality,” he said.

“Once litigation begins people get polarised and it becomes very difficult then to resolve it.”

The group said they did not want a repeat of the lengthy protests and legal action to try to stop the construction of a motorway through Dublin’s Carrickmines Castle.

The spokesman for the group said if legal action failed huge protests would be inevitable and he would be concerned about people’s safety in their efforts to save the National Monument.

The campaigners, who have been backed by Irish actor Stuart Townsend, handed over the 10,000 signatures alongside a written submission, including letters from international archaeologists, to the Environment Department at Dublin’s Customs House.

However, Minister Dick Roche declined to accept the petition personally.

“Hopefully he will at least take a look at our submission and we have asked for a meeting with him,” Mr Salafia said.

The Wicklow TD, who recently took over the Environment post, is due to make a decision on whether the National Roads Authority should be allowed go ahead with their planned route in the near future.

“I am hoping that the minister, he does seem like a very reasonable man, and I am sure that he would want to see the problem solved rather than exacerbated,” Mr Salafia said.

Dr Muireann Ni Bhrolchain of the National University of Ireland in Maynooth said some of the signatures on the petition include the Archaeological Institute of America and the European Association of Archaeologists.

“It will destroy a site which is at the heart of our archaeology, literature and history,” the Celtic Studies lecturer said.

“This is not just an Irish issue it is a world issue. It will have major implications and we still don’t know what the archaeological impact will be.”

One of the letters signed by many archaeologists and lecturers, including Professor John Waddell of National University of Ireland in Galway, stressed that Tara was now under threat.

The 49-kilometre route at its closest point would pass within two-kilometres east of Tara, between the site and the Hill of Skryne.

The NRA unearthed dozens of sites of interest during test digging in the Tara Skryne Valley along the route.

Mr Roche will be considering reports on the significance of these sites before deciding if the NRA should be allowed remove the objects for preservation.

“We would argue the sites are part and parcel of the Hill of Tara,” Mr Salafia said.

“They have announced that it is going to cost them 30 million euro (£20m) to excavate these sites as well.”

The campaign group called upon the Environment Department to re-route the M3 motorway away from the acclaimed site.

They said there were other options such as building the planned by-passes around Co Meath towns and developing a railway between Navan and Dublin.

The Tara-Skryne Valley was first inhabited during the Stone Age and there are passage tombs at the site dating back to around 2,000BC.

The site was looked upon as the capital of Ireland, when it became the seat of the High Kings, who ruled the dozens of kingdoms that had emerged across the country.

The seat stayed at Tara until the sixth century.