Campaigners to protest over M3 route

Protesters opposed to the M3 motorway being routed near the Hill of Tara will today stage a demonstration at Custom House in Dublin.

The campaigners want the Government to halt works through newly discovered archaeological sites along the historic valley in Co Meath.

TaraWatch will urge the new Green Party Minister for Environment John Gormley to stop the major road construction after a number of monuments were uncovered over the weekend.

It said a stone underground chamber and an underground stone passageway with wooden entrances – apparently linked to a complex of underground souterrains - must be saved.

“The Attorney General advised the Minister that he was powerless to reverse the decision of (previous Environment) Minister (Dick) Roche, unless there was a ’material change in circumstances’, which there now is,” said TaraWatch spokesman Vincent Salafia.

“It is plainly absurd to claim that newly discovered underground chambers and passages, possibly Early Christian, found exactly on the site of the last battle of the Fianna, are not important.

“The Minister must investigate the situation in depth because every national monument in the country is at risk to the National Roads Authority with the biased, development-driven system of classification they are using,” he added.