Sir, – We have a housing crisis. It has become a national imperative to build homes for people. Good. But it cannot be at any cost. The system has to allow for circumstances where permission to build is denied or delayed and where we do not squeeze as many dwellings as are physically squeezable into every square inch on every plot of ground on every green field, brown field, nook or cranny in the country.
The system has to have balances. We have a Cabinet Minister responsible for securing housing. Good. And we have a Cabinet Minister with responsibility for protecting this State’s heritage. Good. This is the balance.
How worrying, therefore, and how depressing to read that the Minister, Josepha Madigan TD, whose role it is to safeguard Ireland's historical and archaeological inheritance should describe the discovery of a site of around 60 burials, possibly from the Bronze Age, plus evidence of Iron Age occupation, and of an early medieval ring-fort, as "not a unique or unusual site but instead is quite common" ("Medieval settlement on Cosgrave lands 'not unique', Madigan says", News, April 20th).
Such a site is anything but common. And it is not a renewable resource. When it is destroyed to make way for apartment blocks, it is gone forever. And destroyed it will be, since this State’s policy is not preservation in situ, but (something Orwell might have nightmared up) the absurdly named “preservation by record”, that is, destroy it, but claim you preserved it because an archaeologist filed a report.
The site itself, Beechpark, on Scholarstown Road in Knocklyon, Co Dublin, is in an area extraordinarily rich in historical and archaeological terms and it is heart-breaking to hear the Minister – our Minister for Heritage – speak of it as she did. How poignant to note that it was the former home of the late Liam Cosgrave TD, former taoiseach and leader of Fine Gael, Ms Madigan’s own party, a man who did care about this country’s history and this country’s heritage. – Yours, etc,
SEÁN DUFFY, FTCD
Chairman,
Friends of Medieval
Dublin,
c/o Department of History,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.