The Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, has said that legislation to bring forward the completion of the M50 motorway in Co Dublin will be passed before the Dáil recess.
While the legislation may yet be challenged in the courts, the National Roads Authority is understood to be planning to finish the motorway in the spring of 2005.
As the heritage body, An Taisce, said it feared that the legislation would lead to yet more challenges in the courts, Mr Cullen's spokesman would not say yesterday whether he believed legal action was likely. "Anyone has a right to go to court," he said.
The roads authority had planned to complete the 10km stretch of motorway at Carrickmines Castle in early spring this year, but the project was delayed when the High Court ruled that primary legislation could not be amended by secondary legislation such as regulations or ministerial orders.
The effect of the judgment was to quash a decision of Mr Cullen and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to give joint consent for "the demolition, removal in whole or in part, disfigurement" of Carrickmines Castle.
Until 1996 a national monument could be destroyed if the Office of Public Works and the relevant local authority consented, and if the Minister for the Environment subsequently approved. The OPW was removed by regulation in 1996 as a deciding party and replaced by the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht. The functions were later transferred to the Department of the Environment.
Published yesterday, the National Monuments (Amendment) Bill 2004 will give legislative effect to the transfer of power to the Minister for the Environment to make a direction in respect of building work which may involve interference with, or the destruction of, a national monument.
While the bill refers to the South Eastern Route section of the M50, the south Dublin Fine Gael TD, Ms Olivia Mitchell, said the legislation did not address the underlying problem because it did not define what constituted a national monument.
"I welcome the specific unequivocal green light given to the South Eastern Motorway. This at least should prevent further agonising hold-ups in construction on this critical piece of infrastructure," Ms Mitchell said.
But she added: "This bill does not define what constitutes a national monument. It was the absence of any clear procedure to declare a national monument which forced the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council into endless, expensive and futile court cases in the first place."
An Taisce questioned the wisdom of introducing such legislation without a Green Paper or any other democratic consultation and said that laws created to deal with a single case led to flawed legislation.
