Activist says extra land lets M3 avoid Rath Lugh site

Irish Times
Thursday, March 20, 2008

TIM O'BRIEN

CONSERVATION ACTIVIST Lisa Feeney has said that additional land near
the proposed M3 in Co Meath could be made available to the motorway
builders in order to avoid encroaching on the Rath Lugh site.

Ms Feeney, who emerged after a 60-hour stay in a tunnel at Rath Lugh,
near Tara, at the weekend, said that a review of the route of the
motorway in the light of additional land being available had been
central to her decision to come out.

Ms Feeney maintained that she had reached a 10-point agreement with the
National Roads Authority to leave the tunnel, and while she declined to
detail it in its entirety, she said that part of the agreement was that
there would be a moratorium on building the motorway at Rath Lugh until
April 17th next.

The extra land covers an area up to 40 metres from her tunnel in the
Baronstown direction, and 80 metres in the Lismullin direction.

Ms Feeney said that she had agreed on behalf of the conservationists
camped at Rath Lugh that the contractor would be allowed to build a
"haul road" outside the Rath Lugh preservation area, on which to move
machinery.

But she claimed that the roads authority had "admitted" a critical
seven metres of land "had not been made available to the contractor"
and she said that the acceptance that this land was available formed
the basis of a review she and the roads authority would undertake
jointly, to assess the potential to move the motorway "as far as
possible from Rath Lugh".

Speaking yesterday, Minister for the Environment John Gormley said that
he could "give a cast-iron assurance" that the national monument at
Rath Lugh would not be damaged by building the motorway along the
current alignment.

Mr Gormley said that he had been very pro-active in protecting the
monument with temporary and now full preservation orders, and had
visited the site recently to inspect the preservation afforded to it.
Officials from his department had used maps and aerial photography to
satisfy themselves that no damage to the monument had occurred.

A roads authority spokesman said that some 17 metres of land had not
been made available to the contractor because the roads authority
wanted to restrict the amount of land it would take, in view of the
sensitive nature of the landscape.

"We are satisfied that we can build the motorway without disturbing the
monument. We won't set a foot on the monument or the larger
preservation zone, and then a further safety zone."

Save the Hill of Tara from the M3 Motorway!
http://www.tarawatch.org



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