Controversies over the construction of new national roads have featured strongly in this column in recent months.
However, although the Irish Farmers' Association recently reached agreement with the Government on a number of issues, including compensation for landowners who will lose land to the roads, objections on other grounds still stand.
In Meath, residents are strongly opposing the chosen route of the new N3 realignment from Clonee to Kells, bypassing Dunshaughlin and Navan, because they claim it runs too close to a number of heritage sites and will also destroy lands used as a public amenity.
The Meath Roads Action Group has proposed that the National Roads Authority amalgamate the two bypasses planned for the N2-Ashbourne and N3-Kells routes. However, this submission has been rejected.
Following a number of meetings with local residents and other stakeholders, the roads authority has chosen one of five proposed routes for the N3. The chosen route runs close to the Hill of Tara, a national monument, and also runs through the 500-acre estate at Dalgan Park, owned by the Columban Fathers.
Mr Brendan Magee of the Meath Roads Action Group said the alternative proposal would have saved money and avoided Tara and Dalgan Park. Although it would have taken in some property owned by the Columbans on the other side of the N3, it would also have by-passed Slane, a notorious accident spot.
A spokeswoman for the roads authority said, however, that it had issued a document to the Meath Roads Action Group outlining the reasons why the alternative route proposed wasn't acceptable.
Mr Magee said the argument by the roads authority and Meath County Council - that because the new road would not actually go over the Hill of Tara it was not destroying it - was "illogical".
"The Hill of Tara cannot be seen in isolation, but as an archaeological complex, taking in the Hill of Skryne, Dunsany, etc.," he said.
"There is precedent for this under the Tara Project, part of the Discovery Programme set up by Dúchas in 1992. If you equate it with Newgrange, nobody today would propose building a road between the burial tombs of Newgrange and Knowth, even though they are a mile apart."
Mr Magee deplores the plan to run the N3 route through Dalgan Park, where the Columban Fathers have created walkways along the Boyne and allowed the public access to them.
The action group has told the National Roads Authority it is not against building roads and that most of its members, who have to commute to Dublin, have first-hand experience of the "inadequacies of the road network".
The restoration of the rail network in Meath would relieve most of the transport problems, the group contends.
Mr Magee said the Meath Roads Action Group had written to Dúchas seeking its response to the issue of routing the road so close to a national monument. There had been no response from Dúchas for up to a year, Mr Magee said. Dúchas did not respond to an inquiry from The Irish Times about its stance on the N3 route or on its alleged failure to respond to the action group.
Father Peter O'Neill, director of the Columban Fathers' farm at Dalgan Park, said the order had no problem with running the road through its lands on the far side of the road from Dalgan Park.
The Columbans bought the 500-acre Dalgan Park in 1926 and set up a college there in 1941.
Father O'Neill said reopening the rail line would take many of the cars passing Dalgan Park on a daily basis off the roads.
The Columbans would appear at the oral hearing on the route and would continue to oppose it. "We will put our case again and just keep on protesting and protesting," said Father O'Neill.
A spokeswoman for the roads authority said the provisional date for the publication of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the route was February. Those affected by compulsory purchase would be notified at that stage. The tender process would take the matter up to early 2003.
The spokeswoman added that the NRA had met with the residents groups "about three times" and that it had responded with a "comprehensive document" outlining the reasons why its alternative route was "not an ideal proposal".