Can a booklet save our heritage?
The booklet, entitled 'The NRA, the M3 and Archaeology The Facts', will, according to the advertisement, answer all our questions about the proposed 64km tolled motorway and its impact on the archaeological heritage.
If this document does all that it promises, it must be seen as a welcome development, a constructive step in a highly fraught and at times confusing debate where expert opinion and interpretation are clearly divided, where hard facts have often been in short supply and where significant findings have been either totally ignored or buried in a mass of technical data and ambiguous verbal padding.
Presumably in answering "all our questions" and in setting out "the facts", this timely booklet will fully and honestly inform us as to the impact which the M3 motorway will have on our archaeological heritage, particularly the extremely important Tara landscape and the likely financial costs and time factors involved in the necessity adequately to "resolve" (ultimately to destroy) this heritage.
As a first step it would be helpful if this booklet could tell us why the NRA and Meath County Council decided to build a motorway through the Tara landscape in the first place "one of the richest archaeological landscapes in Europe" and why they decided to build a massive floodlit interchange just over 1km from the Hill of Tara itself.
The booklet could also tell us why the experts on Tara's archaeology members of the Discovery Programme Tara Survey were never consulted, and why the plan went ahead despite the clear warnings given in the early route selection reports.
Presumably it could also tell us why given the high sensitivity of the landscape and its key importance a geophysical survey was undertaken in respect of only one of the proposed routes (after it was selected as the preferred one).
It could also tell us why when this survey revealed an astonishing number of new and complex archaeological sites neither Meath county councillors nor the general public were fully appraised as to the significance of these findings.
This book of facts should at least clear up the discrepancies that have arisen as to the minimum number of confirmed sites to be impacted by the road in this section (and which, according to the commitment made at the oral hearing, the NRA must fully excavate).
These discrepancies arise from conflicting accounts given by NRA spokespersons at various times over the past 12 months giving the number of sites and monuments to be impacted/destroyed as five, 20, 30, and even 43.
While acknowledging that different interpretations can be applied and recognising that any such data is only "the tip of the iceberg" it is strange to find such major differences coming from within the same official source.
There are many serious concerns in relation to the M3, not all related to the heritage (chief among these is the long overdue Dunshaughlin bypass, now doomed to indefinite delay due to the growing archaeological dimension).
Real progress towards a resolution can only be made when:
(a) A fully inclusive and informed public debate is entered into (and this must involve hearing independent expert opinion as well as those charged with the implementation of the project), and;
(b) Our political leaders recognise that real difficulties have arisen and are willing to countenance a re-examination of part of the scheme.
Tara and its protection are not just matters for the people of Meath Tara is Ireland's premier national monument, treasured by Irish people everywhere.
It is also part of the European 'collective memory' which we promised to protect when we ratified the European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage (Valetta convention, 1992). Rather than destroy this unique landscape, we have a duty to preserve it for future generations to research and enjoy.
Julitta Clancy
Assistant Secretary
Meath Archaeological and Historical Society
Parsonstown
Batterstown
Co Meath.
