On the face of it the State can no longer be held to ransom by delays in major infrastructural schemes, writes Tim O'Brien
It is now 20 years since the M50, Dublin's motorway bypass, was initiated. In the south Co Dublin suburbs of Ballinteer, Dundrum and Sandyford, motorists queue in residential streets to emerge from housing estates. It can take 20 minutes just to reach the main road on the corner. Residents have been enduring the fumes, dust, danger and appalling quality of life for several years. These people are impatient and indignant: support for the "Carrickminders" is low.
The incomplete bypass has also hurt the city economically, in terms of industrial development and additional time and costs to distribution. According to conservationists, however, the Carrickmines Castle conflict could have been avoided when the line of the motorway was drawn in the early 1990s. There was ample evidence already published to suggest that caution be exercised before a road went there. The 1983 Dublin County Council report by archaeologist Paddy Healy alone should have alerted the planners.
Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council selected the route and a junction facilitating development of the lands of Jackson Way Properties. That, of course, is now the subject of investigation at the Mahon Tribunal, and has exposed the council to compensation claims in tens of millions of euro. And it set the needs of the residents of Dundrum against the wishes of the conservationists.
It was a situation comparable to the Glen O' the Downs in Co Wicklow where the needs of the people for a decent road into the capital were set against the wishes to retain all of the State's first nature reserve. In Waterford, the needs of a new bypass are now pitted against conservation of one of the oldest and most important Viking sites in Europe; in Meath the need for a new motorway is set against the conservation of archaeology at Skreen - part of the archaeological complex which includes the Hill of Tara, which is as old as the pyramids of Egypt.
It is these conflicts to which the Minister for the Environment, Martin Cullen, said he wished to bring "balance". He would "protect the archaeological heritage by giving directions covering such matters as the preservation, restoration, excavation, recording or demolition of a monument".
But Mark Clinton, who was for two years the director on the Carrickmines archaeological project, has described Cullen's logic as Orwellian: if the Minister ascribes to himself all the power, then there can be no more conflict. "Problem solved".
In granting himself the power to decide on the necessity and level of preservation as well as the power to bulldoze, Cullen has made the archaeological community "dependent on what side of the bed he gets out of in the morning", said Clinton.
"We have zero trust in Minister Cullen - he knew about the Woodstown site (the Viking site in Waterford) for 10 months before news was leaked out by good people saying do you know what we've got here. Yet this is the Minister who is now saying give all the power for conservation to me."
Dr Sean Duffy, head of medieval archaeology in Trinity College Dublin, agrees: "This will push the clock back to the period before the National Monuments Act, back before the 1930s," he said. The mood in conservationist circles is glum. Dr Dave Edwards of University College Cork, co-founder with Roy Foster of the Academy for Heritage, said the legislation lacked "any basic definition of what is a national monument. It comes from the ideological mindset which views heritage as a problem".
Ruadhan McEoin, a seasoned campaigner, added: "it is a 'Special Powers Act' on the heritage agenda".
The new legislation, which allows the Minister for the Environment to decide the level of protection offered to national monuments, will be crucial in a number of flash points over the coming years.
Apart from allowing the immediate go-ahead of the Carrickmines Castle interchange and destruction of part of the castle remains, the Bill would give Martin Cullen a final say on a number of projects which may have previously relied on the protection of the National Monuments Acts. These include:
The building of the M3 motorway through the Skreen Valley in Co Meath. Conservationists claim the valley is part of an archaeological complex which includes the Hill of Tara - archaeological features which pre-date the pyramids. The National Roads Authority has clearance from Bord Pleanála to build the M3, but court challenges had already been planned.
The Viking settlement discovered last year in Cullen's constituency of Waterford. The settlement at Woodstown has been described as one of, if not the most, significant Viking remains discovered in Europe. The complex comprises a settlement at the mouth of the Suir, from where raiding parties would have travelled up the Suir, Barrow and Nore. It also appears to have been a shipbuilding base.
Developments in the lands attached to national monuments, such as an hotel being built in close proximity to Trim Castle.
Glen Ding. Roadstone has applied to Wicklow County Council for planning permission to extract gravel from Glen Ding, on which two national monuments have been identified.