The High Court will give its decision in March on the challenge by an environmentalist to the proposed routing of the M3 motorway near the Hill of Tara.
After Mr Justice Thomas Smyth this afternoon ruled that he did not require to hear oral evidence by archaeologists and other experts in order to determine legal issues in the case, the seven-day hearing concluded and the judge said he would deliver judgment on March 1st.
Counsel for Vincent Salafia, objecting to the M3 route, had earlier argued there were factual disputes in the case, particularly relating to whether the greater Tara area constitutes a national monument. It was submitted the court should hear oral evidence from experts on such matters.
However, lawyers for the Minister for the Environment, the State, Meath Co Co and the National Roads Authority argued that oral evidence was not necessary to determine the legal issues and submitted that none of Mr Salafia's experts had sworn on affidavit that any of 38 sites discovered during test trenching of the proposed M3 route constituted national monuments.
After hearing both sides, the judge said he had to ask himself whether oral evidence and cross-examination of experts would assist him in the determination of the identified issues in the case. The answer to that had to be no, he said.
While there were conflicting views and opinions by highly qualified experts on both sides, those views were not focussed on any issue which he must determine, he ruled. These matters of opinion regarding the archaeological landscape, culture and heritage of the Tara area were extremely interesting but he had to keep firmly focused on the issues.
He did not see that his decision not to permit oral evidence deprived Mr Salafia of any benefit in the case, the judge added. Earlier, in closing arguments for Mr Salafia, Mr Frank Callanan SC said the role of archaeological and other experts, including the Director of the National Museum, had been "considerably diluted" under new laws enacted to deal with the discovery of national monuments during construction of a motorway.
The State had effectively argued in this case that it has no substantive obligation regarding conservation of our national heritage, he said. The protection now afforded for national monuments under the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 2004 was "so deficient" that there is not even a requirement that the Minister for the Environment should identify a national monument before issuing directions relating to works of an archaeological nature along the route of a motorway.
Mr Salafia, of Dodder Vale, Churchtown, Dublin, is seeking to overturn the directions given by the Minister and is also challenging the constitutionality of provisions of the 2004 Act on the grounds that they give the Minister an unreviewable and unfettered discretion to disapply protections for national monuments.
In addition, Mr Salafia wants a court declaration that the Hill of Tara/Skryne valley constitutes a national monument and a complex or series of national monuments.