Tara Watch
Click to viewA repost from Tara Watch's bulletin on MySpace beneath the cut.
On Friday 21 March, Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, of the Green Party, was quoted in The Irish Times as saying 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.
On the same day, Professor George Eogan travelled to Rath Lugh with Tara Watch, and witnessed the demolition works taking place there.
Professor Eogan is one of Ireland’s most eminent archaeologists. He is Professor Emeritus of Archaeology at University College Dublin.
George is also former Director of the Discovery Programme, the Irish state archaeological research unit, which sponsored the Tara Project, which entailed ten years of non-instrusive archaeological and historical research, by Conor Newman, Joe Fenwick, and Edel Bhreatnach.
Today, The Irish Times published a letter from Professor Eogan:
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MOTORWAY WORKS AT TARA
Letter to the Editor - The Irish Times
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Madam, - I was very disappointed to read in last Friday’s Irish Times that the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley, declared himself satisfied that the National Roads Authority proposals, if implemented, would result in the protection of the monument at Rath Lugh.
This is not so as the monument and its environment have already been mutilated by work carried out on the proposed route of the motorway.
Rath Lugh and its environment is an integral part of the Tara archaeological and cultural complex. Its environment includes the significant Gabhra Valley to the west towards the Hill of Tara. The latter area is now reduced to a strip of rubble as a result of work carried out by and with the authority of the present Government of which Mr Gormley is a member. Furthermore, Rath Lugh is now divorced from the archaeological complex of which it formed a part from its construction many centuries ago. As a result of the destruction, which I witnessed a couple of days ago, a "new" environment has now emerged, the personality of the area is being destroyed.
Standing on Rath Lugh and looking across the Gabhra Valley the main feature of that area is now the equivalent of a "race track" with heavy machinery driving up and down at considerable speed and creating vibrations which can be felt on Rath Lugh.
In the area that I visited three lines of defence were in place. The outermost is a spiked iron fence up to eight feet in height and secured in concrete, next came security personnel and further inwards were members of the Garda Síochána. For me, this was an intimidating experience and one that I never expected to see in order to facilitate the destruction, by our own Government, of a key portion of our own great archaeological inheritance.
- Yours, etc,
GEORGE EOGAN, Brighton Road, Rathgar, Dublin.