Tara activists take campaign to US

Campaigners battling the development of the M3 motorway near the historic Hill of Tara will take their protest to the US this…

Campaigners battling the development of the M3 motorway near the historic Hill of Tara will take their protest to the US this weekend.

Members of the Save Tara campaign group protesting in Dublin last weekend. Image: Irish Times.
Members of the Save Tara campaign group protesting in Dublin last weekend. Image: Irish Times.

Poets, musicians, historians and archaeologists will join the Save Tara group outside the Consulate General of Ireland in New York tomorrow. At the same time, protests will be held in Chicago, Los Angeles and Dublin.

Tara, in the heart of Co Meath, was earlier this year placed on the World Monuments Fund (WMF) list of the world's 100 most endangered sites.

Bonnie Burnham, the WMF president, said the site is hugely important. "Tara Hill, which is the centerpiece of a large archaeological landscape with hundreds of significant sites, is the ceremonial and mythical capital of Ireland," she said.

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The New York protest will be opened by "Strings of Tara", a group of young women harpers, and speakers include Pulitzer prize winning poet Paul Muldoon.

Campaigners have also enlisted the support of Hollywood actors Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Stuart Townsend, and the pair will fly over Tara on Sunday as 1,000 protesters gather below.