We're about to destroy a priceless national monument, says the site archaeologist for Carrickmines Castle. Paul Cullen reports.

You'd think Dr Mark Clinton would be happy. After all, he has just finished leading the biggest archaeological dig Ireland has seen. Over 18 months and at a cost of €6 million, Clinton and up to 200 workers have sifted through tons of soil around Carrickmines Castle, in south Co Dublin. Their labours have turned up 100,000 finds, from pottery to weapons to personal ornaments, and uncovered a medieval site of astonishing size and complexity.

Yet Clinton is not happy. In fact, he is angry, angry enough to break his silence over what he sees as the imminent destruction of a priceless national monument. Greed and ineptitude characterise the controversy over the castle and the building of the south-eastern section of the M50 motorway, he says, and the entire affair has been "a disaster from day one".

"At an early stage, they should have said: 'We're in trouble, this is a huge site. Move the road now.' But that didn't happen." Clinton maintains there was enough evidence five years ago to show that the area of the castle was rich with archaeological potential and should have been given a wide berth by the motorway route.

This evidence, however - a Foras Forbartha report from 1983, a geophysical survey carried out in 1998, the 1840 Ordnance Survey map - was not supplied to the archaeologists before they started digging, he says.

"It could all have been avoided. As far back as 1996 there was enough information around to show this was a colossal site. This whole field is alive with archaeology. Suddenly we had this massive site and just 20 people to dig it."

His arguments aren't entirely altruistic. The Government, in its response to a complaint about Carrickmines Castle to the European Commission, has laid much of the blame for the delays at his door. Clinton says he has been made "the fall guy" for insisting on more time and resources to excavate the site fully, thereby delaying the construction of the motorway. "That's what went wrong for them. I'm a soldier of the old school, and I stood my ground."

As the dig continued, he says, he came under strong pressure to wrap things up. " 'Do you not feel guilty? How many dialysis machines could you buy with the money being spent?' I was told."

Officialdom has also pointed the finger at the "Carrickminders" for the delays in building the motorway when they occupied the site for 150 days until last February. But Clinton says he "salutes" the protest group. "If they hadn't intervened, the site would have been bulldozed in August 2002 within 48 hours of me leaving."

Extra time was provided for excavation last year, and it was decided to lift the most prominent feature, a revetted fosse, or stone ditch, and rebuild it elsewhere on the site. "Imagine, they're going to reconstruct parts of the wall elsewhere on the site: just like Wood Quay," Clinton comments, unimpressed. "Come on, we have been through this pathetic episode before."

No fort has been discovered at the site of Carrickmines Castle, and many have argued that the remains - a ditch here, a gateway there - are distinctly unimpressive, at least to the untrained eye.

To which Clinton responds: "What do you need to discover before a site can be allowed to survive: the Pyramids or the grave of St Patrick? Is the Hill of Tara that impressive? OK so, let's bulldoze it. Let's face it, this has nothing to do with the motorway itself. It's all to do with opening up the lands alongside for development. They just have to have their intersection."

Ruadhan MacEoin of the Carrickminders says they were prepared to accept the completion of the motorway provided the Carrickmines intersection, which also crosses the site, was sent back for "proper planning".

He says: "Had there been a compromise, we would have walked away. But now it's an all-or-nothing situation."

But according to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, the intersection is needed as much as the motorway. "This is an urban motorway, and you can't leave communities alongside it cut off or isolated," says the council's director of transportation, Eamon O'Hare. "There's a balance to be struck between the heritage of the site and the need for the motorway. We have addressed this balance," he says.

O'Hare says he speaks for "the silent majority" who are "trapped in their housing estates" by traffic congestion. "Life in this area can't go on as it is at the moment. How can people invest in this region with the traffic chaos as it is? It's time to put the rest of the motorway jigsaw in place."

Clinton is unconsoled. He sees his profession being used as "fig leaves" in the rush to build. Archaeology has become "a multimillion-euro industry", but up to 80 per cent of finds are in the topsoil and therefore scraped away even before a developer calls in the diggers, he claims.

"I'm not an obsessive who's bitter about Carrickmines," he insists. "What I do see is our heritage being whammied across the board. Perhaps it's time for the country to redefine itself in an honest way and to end the hypocrisy. You learn all this stuff about history and culture at school, and then we go and sacrifice it for a poxy third-rate motorway."

What happens now?

Historians say Ireland's first massacre was carried out here, but even today Carrickmines Castle has the power to cause bitter strife.

The row about the medieval site and the approaching M50 motorway has divided the community in south Dublin, led to virtual pitched battles between conservationists and road-builders and split politicians, An Taisce and the archaeological profession.

It has also added tens of millions of euro to the cost of building the motorway without delivering either a functioning road or a preserved castle, let alone both.

While motorists fume in traffic jams all over south Co Dublin, conservationists bewail what they see as the destruction of a priceless heritage.

But now the endgame in this latter-day Battle of Carrickmines approaches. Later this month, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council expects to get court approval to allow the completion of the motorway through what's left of the castle site.

Ironically perhaps, given the attitude of the Government, the reason the site has been spared in recent months has to do with the light sitting schedule of the Dáil. Last July Martin Cullen, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, gave permission under the National Monuments Act to interfere with Carrickmines Castle, but his order first had to lie before the Oireachtas for 21 sitting days before it could be implemented.

That period is up on November 25th, unless the Oireachtas votes to annul it. Although the Green party has tabled a motion that would have this effect, it holds out little hope of success.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council will then go to the High Court to have the present injunction lifted, according to its director of transportation, Eamon O'Hare.

"People have had their day in the sun. They used the legal channels to make their opposition known, and that's good. We have responded in the same way and now hope that will be the end of it."

The castle's earthwork defences will then be moved, the diggers coming in once some outstanding archaeological work on Glenamuck Road is completed. Carrickmines' remaining secrets will be bulldozed, some of the unexcavated sections left buried under roadworks for generations to come.

The council and the National Roads Authority are already proceeding with the extension of the motorway from Ballinteer to Sandyford on the western side and from Shankill to Wyattville to the east.

These sections are scheduled to open by August 2005.

That would leave a gap several kilometres long around Carrickmines in the otherwise complete C-ring motorway around Dublin "if we do not resolve this shortly", according to O'Hare.

Such a scenario would be embarrassing for the road-builders but virtually unthinkable for

Government TDs in south Co Dublin gearing up for an election campaign around this time.

If the council does get the go-ahead later this month, O'Hare believes it can complete the entire M50 by the 2005 deadline.

But that's not reckoning with an imminent legal challenge from the Carrickminders, the European Commission's deliberations on the matter and a possible reoccupation by protesters.

Carrickmines may not have seen its last battle.