The fight to save ancient site of Tara returns this Christmas

The festive season often brings a quiet push for controversial infrastructure plans while the public is busy with holiday preparations. We must rally immediately to ensure the proposed Leinster Orbital does not repeat the historic mistakes of the M3 motorway and permanently damage our heritage.

Christmas is coming and all around Ireland, communities are getting ready for the yearly tradition of pushing controversial ideas and community engagement through while we’re all distracted.  Twelve pub hangovers are pushed to the side while busy little elves fill up community surveys, write submissions and alert our allies. 

The Meath Chronicle reports that the Leinster/Outer Orbital is back on the table. After years of quiet, Tara Skryne Preservation Group must be reactivate. I remember a line a journalist used – Why repeat the mistakes of the M3. Could that be our line? Or just Save Tara… Again.

I hope that this time we succeed. Standing tall on the Hill of Tara, you can almost feel St Patrick’s dismay to have his victory over the Irish pagan spirit shredded by the M3 motorway. Now, the proposed Outer Orbital will sever him from his Easter Fire at the Hill of Slane.

A quick search reveals Leinster Orbital with TSPG alternate. My computer tells me it was created a long time ago. Even then, I knew I’d need it again. Where is Green Heart? Facebook makes it harder. Our Green Heart Strategy to move our infrastructure forward without destroying our heritage cannot be uploaded to the TSPG group.

Who will listen? I go through the list in my head. With Ireland’s world heritage site Brú Na Boinne/Newgrange threatened, surely UNESCO will object? In 2018, they refused to reply. Eventually, the truth. Tara will never be a world heritage site in the category it is proposed in. Another Irish government deflection.

Newgrange, County Meath.

I put my faith in Baby Jesus and the Áos Sí. God’s new and old, both hold Tara dear. Both approve of the 3,000 years of just law, rights and obligations which protected the poor and rich equally. When justice was served not by obfuscation but by everyone telling their truth. This fairness and justice aligned so closely with Christian values that these laws were maintained well into the Christian era until the Elizabethan conquests. It is closely akin to the American dream that working hard should bring rewards but bad luck should not leave you stranded. 

I think of our successes. Proposed around 2018, the Leinster Orbital has not yet destroyed a national monument. The draft Tara Landscape Conservation Area, defined by the people of Meath, has already stopped a large truck stop from being put within the LCA. The TII Archaeologist and Strategist listened when I pointed out that the Meath County Development plan would enshrine the current Outer Orbital route along its current disastrous path through not one but two World heritage areas.

Yet, it goes on. Changing the name of Leinster Orbital? We obviously got some push through. Home to St. Patrick’s scared fire, the proposed Slane-by pass route would only increase traffic on the N2, giving excuse for an unnecessary M2. Traffic can easily be shunted to M1 and M3, both only 10 miles away. TSPG says by-pass the village but don’t give succour to toll-dodgers.

So what should happen with the Leinster/Outer Orbital? Turns out it is very simple. 

The Leinster Orbital just needs to be routed properly around the World Heritage Landscapes and include a metro or train line that meets up with the Drogheda Line and Galway/West line into Dublin. TSPG Green heart shows how small an area needs to be protected to save 80% of Irish heritage. That much happened in Tara. The Tara LCA should be brought from draft form into law. This time the ordinary Meath people and TII employees should be protected from the aggressive behaviour that marred and finally shut down the last Tara LCA process. 

We cannot deny that Ireland is growing but Irish people need our heritage. Protecting Tara’s Green heart as a local-development-only area provides a much need lung, recreational and heritage area in what is now effectively outer-Dublin. 1 million Irish people went to Tara in August 1843 for Daniel O’Connell’s Monster March. 1/8 of the population, there is no other landscape in Ireland that our 80 million diaspora can be sure their ancestors walked across. Surely, that is worth saving? 

Happy Christmas to me. 

* Pauline Bleach is an Irish writer and works on Initiatives at TSPG to address threats to the Hill of Tara and its LCA and provide workable solutions to the Development vs. Heritage. The TSPG Green Heart strategy shows how not to repeat the “mistakes” of the M3 which destroy 3 National Monuments, 140 other Monuments, and left a motorway embedded in the Rath Lugh, the Grave Mound of the Fianna.

To learn more become a member of TSPG please join our Facebook group.  Read their Hill of Tara and LCA - Green Heart strategy or sign their petition.