Ancient Hill of Tara Threatened by New Road Development
An urgent international protest has been launched to save one of Ireland's most sacred historical sites in the Boyne Valley, County Meath. The objective is to prevent the construction of a four lane highway through the Tara Skryne Valley, which will pass only meters away from the Hill of Tara, with a clover leaf exchange only 50 meters to the north of the Hill.
Immediately after An Bord Pleanála granted planning permission for the M3 motorway last August, a group of prominent local, national and international scholars along with archaeologists and activists launched the Save Tara/Skryne Valley Campaign.
The group is appalled at the destruction of what has been identified as one of the most culturally and archaeologically significant places in the world. Many monuments predate the Egyptian pyramids.
According to historical expert Conor Neman, “this section [of the M3] runs through one of the richest and best-known archaeological landscapes in Europe. To the west is the Hill of Tara, the seat of the high-kings of Ireland and a focus of ritual, political, social and religious activity for over 4,000 years, and to its east is the early medieval ecclesiastical settlement of Skreen.”
Professor Alfred Smyth, Chair of Medieval History, Canterbury University, said, “This is nothing short of a massive national tragedy – you cannot separate Tara from Skryne and you cannot separate Tara from the Boyne.”
In contrast to the situation in the Boyne Valley, in England the British government has proposed removing traffic around the monument at Stonehenge to restore the tranquillity of the landscape. The plan is to remove two nearby roads by grassing over one and burying the other in a tunnel of two kilometers. The cost is estimated at under EU200 million.
In addition to the destruction of the archeological treasures, the Save Tara/Skryne Valley Campaign has pointed out a number of additional issues, such as the fact that the new motorway will be built as a Public Private Partnership Scheme and will have two toll booths, one between Kells and Navan, another between Navan and Clonee, with a toll charge of E1.10 at each location in both directions.
Although the M3 has a price tag of EU680 million, taxpayers and road users will pay more than EU1.3 billion in taxes and toll charges over its first 30 years, despite the fact that the new motorway will cut just nine minutes off an off-peak journey from Navan to Dublin, and 17 minutes from Kells to Dublin.
Estimated profits to the toll company, after operating costs, are projected to be over EU360 million. The M3 will contribute to the doubling of traffic levels between Navan and Clonee by 2016, causing increased congestion, queuing times and stress levels for commuters.
In addition to the incalculable damage to the Tara/Skryne Valley the M3 will also ruin Dalgan Park, a nature reserve open to the public free of charge, by carving it in half. The motorway corridor will also attract an unprecedented degree of residential development along the route, pricing local people and their families out of their own neighbourhoods, and destroying the social fabric of dozens of small towns and villages.
Even though two alternate routes to the M3 were proposed and more than viable, the Irish government chose the present route. Plans are underway to dig some preliminary trenches in the valley within the next few weeks, and construction will begin early this spring.
For more information about the Save Tara/Skryne Valley Campaign and how to support their petition, call Chairman Percy Jordan 011-343-46-902-6261, or visit: www.taraskryne.org.
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