Roads cannot be called progress when they destroy heritage

FOR several months I have watched from across the sea as the fate of my ancestral homeland has been decided on the pages of newspapers, in public hearings, and in the High Court.

And though it pains me to write it, it pains me even more deeply to see it: the Ireland of my dreams is gripped in the blind frenzy of what the television calls “progress”, and the Hill of Tara, the heart of Ireland, is slated to suffer for it.

I was raised in a nation where priority has been given to the highway. The farmer, the American Indian, the landowner, all the birds of the air and all the beasts of the earth are shoved aside so that a great ribbon of black rock and oil may be smeared across the land in an endless campaign to give precedence to the automobile.