Madam, - Your edition of February 3rd generously gave space to a short report of my presentation on the Hill of Tara at the Environ 2004 conference in Limerick. We philosophers don't usually get a lot of attention any more, so I am thankful. However, I must point out that some of the quotations attributed to me actually belong to other academics whose written protests against the M3 motorway I was reviewing.
The statement that Tara "constitutes the heart and soul of Ireland" and that the motorway would be "a massive national and international tragedy" belongs to a joint letter endorsed by Dr Muireann Ni Bhrolcháin, NUI Maynooth, and 11 other eminent intellectuals around the world. The statement that Co Meath is set to become "one vast, dreary estate and car park for north Dublin" belongs to Dr Alfred Smyth, professor of history at Canterbury.
It happens that I am in complete agreement with the claims attributed to me in the Irish Times article, and that is why I referred to them in my presentation in Limerick. A dual-carriageway toll road through Tara would indeed be a massive failure of cultural pride and ecological morality on the part of the Government planners who permit it to go ahead, and possibly also on the part of those who complacently do nothing about it when there is an opportunity to do so.
I certainly acknowledge the need for the existing N3 to be upgraded - having waited in the Dunshaughlin traffic jam for hours on several occasions, and having nearly been killed by driving over a pothole outside Navan - but there are many viable alternatives to a needless dual-carriageway. Motorway development is a problem everywhere, but a motorway so near Tara, which should be a World Heritage Site, adds extra urgency to the problem. Tara, both as a heritage monument and as a landscape of extraordinary beauty, should be the great showcase for the display of Ireland's ecological and cultural values. - Yours, etc.,
BRENDAN MYERS, Department of Philosophy, NUI, Galway.