Squandermania on the road to nowhere

WHILE Claire O’Sullivan (‘On the Road to Nowhere,’ Irish Examiner, November 1) paints an unsettling picture of gross mismanagement coupled with the squandering of billions of Irish taxpayers’ money in the ‘interest’ of the nation’s infrastructure, it is all too easy to overlook an equally disturbing hidden cost — the ‘collateral’ damage to our unique and vulnerable cultural heritage.

In the case of the M3 motorway through the Tara landscape, the taxpayer is being mugged not once, not twice but thrice: the spiralling costs of this project from an initial estimate of little over €500 million to a figure in excess of €1 billion; the needless desecration of Ireland’s premier archaeological and historical site in the name of economic progress and, to heap insult on injury, the prospect of long-suffering commuters obliged to pay a princely toll (not twice but four times per round-trip) for the privilege of using this white elephant once it is completed.

Is there no end to this learning curve? Have we not learned enough?