After 10 years of controversy, Wicklow County Council this week began work on an £18 million road improvement scheme, involving the construction of five kilometres of dual carriageway through the Glen of the Downs, a wooded, picturesque and protected valley in Co Wicklow.
The work, says the County Secretary, is essential for safety reasons. It has got to the stage, he says, where people who live in the area say that crossing the road has become virtually impossible. The council, he says, is "fully aware of the environmental importance of this area and commissioned an Environmental Impact Statement. This found that there will be no significant environmental damage as a result of the improvement scheme."
Since 1995, he adds, the Council has been cultivating acorns from trees currently growing in the area, to replace the "700 trees which have to be felled and a further 1,000 trees which will be disturbed and may also have to be felled. The majority of the trees to be felled are not mature and much of the area to be cleared is scrub."
Though still clearly controversial, no-one denies that the current scheme is a vast improvement on the council's original plan which would have destroyed up to 40 per cent of the Glen's wetland, ash and hazel trees as well as a stream which was to be piped and covered in. This plan was effectively scuppered by Alex Perkins, local resident, consultant ecologist and adviser to the Green Party, who, with the help of Councillor Nuala Ahern (later a Green MEP) took the case to Brussels and thereby forced the Council to carry out an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
Perkins also proposed a new alignment for the road which would save the stream and the wetlands, would narrow the Glen road from 33 metres to 25 and reduce the number of trees to be felled to 1,700 as against 3,500. In 1994, the route, including the realignment, was certified by the Department of the Environment. Not everyone, however, was mollified.
Jim Fitzpatrick, a tree surgeon who also lives locally, claims that an EIS was never done on the realigned stretch of road, an issue which he says undermines the legal basis of the whole project. Another petition has gone to Brussels on that basis, supported by Nuala Ahern. Mr Fitzpatrick also complains of a democracy deficit, claiming that the Council and the Department of the Environment, as developers, are "acting as judge and jury on their own plans".
Although the Council says that just two per cent of the woodland needs to be felled and the Wildlife Service states that almost half of the trees are non-native species, "which were earmarked for removal over the coming years anyway", Mr Fitzpatrick points to the rarity of the native Sessile oak to be found there, as well as the danger to some rare species of flora and fauna. "The Glen of the Downs is the most important of these areas directly descended from the ancient woodlands of Ireland and is also a statutory nature reserve and important habitat."
The final design, including the retaining wall, he says, was never made public or comments sought, although it is the area of greatest tree loss. Alex Perkins - who at one point accused the Vigil Keepers of "jumping on the bandwagon" - is still on the case, stating that he still has a number of further proposals under consideration by the Office of Public Works.