Analysis: Minister Dick Roche could save the Hill of Tara's landscape, but now appears set to allow the M3 to snake through it, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
Dick Roche is well aware that the central issue in the row over the M3 is the impact it would have on the entire archaeological landscape surrounding the Hill of Tara. Yet he now seems prepared to allow the motorway to cut a swathe through that landscape.
In doing so, even with measures to mitigate its impact, the Minister for the Environment would be flying in the face of a growing campaign to protect Tara's setting, as well as running a major risk that the proposed tolled motorway will be held up for years by legal actions.
Few could fail to have sympathy with people living in Co Meath who face the daily nightmare of long commutes to work in Dublin on the chronically congested N3. "Tired of sitting in your car?", posters put up during the recent byelection campaign asked passing motorists. "Support the M3".
But Julitta Clancy, secretary of the Meath Archaeological Society, countered this in a letter to The Irish Times on March 7th saying: "We have not the right to destroy one of the richest and most important archaeological landscapes in Europe to achieve the long-overdue relief."
As the leaders of 12 Irish clubs and associations throughout Europe noted in another letter on March 15th, WB Yeats once described the hill as "probably the most consecrated spot in Ireland" - the place where both of Ireland's national symbols, the harp and the shamrock, originated.
Mr Roche could save Tara's setting by declining to issue licences for the excavation of numerous archaeological sites along the route of the M3.
Such a move would force the National Roads Authority (NRA) and Meath County Council to choose a less sensitive alignment, east of Skryne.
The Minister says he cannot revisit An Bord Pleanála's August 2003 decision to approve the present route. Yet the board's ruling is unreliable. Just over six months later, it refused permission for a golf course in the Tara-Skryne valley because it would be "visually intrusive in this sensitive landscape".
It noted that one of the objectives of the Meath county plan is to protect the hills of Tara and Skryne from "visually damaging development . . . that would cumulatively erode landscape quality" and said the golf course would "detract from the character, appearance and interpretative experience of the region".
That a four-lane motorway snaking through the same valley was not considered "visually intrusive" illustrates the board's pusillanimous approach to the Government's road-building programme; all 16 of the major road projects on which it has adjudicated since January 2003 have been approved.
These include the proposed M7/M8 interchange in Co Laois, even though the inspector who dealt with the case recommended a refusal because - as designed - it would cater for Dublin-Limerick and Dublin-Cork traffic but would be utterly useless to anyone travelling between Limerick and Cork.
The Minister's willingness to facilitate the M3 contrasts with the preservation order he is to make for the Woodstown Viking site in Waterford. In that case, however, the NRA had already decided to cut its losses by rerouting the city's bypass around the site. With the M3, it is still determined to proceed.
Dr Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum, is not alone in warning that the proposed M3/N3 interchange at Blundelstown would "demean" Tara's setting because it would be clearly visible from the hill.
Indeed, the interchange would occupy an area of 30 acres and be floodlit day and night.
It is also known that property developers have been buying land along the M3 route, in the confident expectation that it will appreciate in value once the motorway opens.
There is no suggestion that Mr Roche's imminent decision to proceed with the present route would be influenced by such considerations. Nonetheless, it is a fact that other motorway interchanges have become "hot spots" for developing service areas, retail warehousing and other lucrative schemes.
Neither is the Minister likely to be influenced at this stage by a statement issued yesterday by more than 80 academics and scholars worldwide stressing the importance of Tara's landscape and warning that Ireland would acquire a negative image internationally if the motorway slices through it.
"How can it be justified, in what is now one of the richest countries in Europe, that such a sensitive landscape is destroyed rather than subjected to proper landscape management . . . as has been done with the comparable landscape of the Boyne Valley?", they asked.