COMPETING CAMPAIGN groups have clashed over the building of a bypass around Slane, Co Meath.
A number of fatal and other serious crashes have occurred in Slane and on its approach roads in recent years, many of them involving lorries that locals claim are diverting through the village to avoid motorway tolls on the M1.
The Bypass Slane Campaign has described as “alarmist and provocative” what it described as media comments that the recently announced preferred route of the new bypass will run 500 metres from the buffer zone around the neolithic site of Newgrange.
The bypass campaign insisted the proposed route will pass 500 metres “from the western boundary of the outer buffer zone of the World Heritage Site of Brú na Bóinne”.
The group also said the road was “not about economics or shortening journey times by a matter of a few minutes, it is about saving lives”.
A spokeswoman for the group told The Irish Timesthe situation was different from the M3 motorway close to the Hill of Tara.
“The key problem with the Tara landscape was that there were no clear lines mapping the extent of that archaeological landscape and the expert witnesses at the oral hearing failed to agree as to where such a line should be drawn,” she said.
“This is clearly not the case with Brú na Bóinne.
“The boundaries of the World Heritage Site have been carefully drawn as long ago as 1989 to preserve and protect the archaeological landscape in the core area, with an additional buffer zone to protect the integrity of the river Boyne and the views into and out of the core area.
“While part of the proposed bypass may be visible from points within the World Heritage Site, it is clear that the road lies a significant distance outside these boundaries.”
However, the Save Newgrange campaign has launched an online petition, aimed at what it claimed is “ensuring the maximum protection for the archaeological ensemble of the Bend of the Boyne World Heritage Site”.
It said this was in light of the recently published “preferred route” of the Slane bypass, which will pass within 500 metres of the site.
The petition calls on Unesco to place the site on the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger and to consider extending the site’s boundary to include newly discovered archaeological sites.
