Site excavations on M3 may cost €30m

Excavation of archaeological sites on the proposed route of the M3 motorway in Co Meath will cost up to €30 million, it emerged yesterday.

At a presentation to Meath County Council, the National Roads Authority (NRA) confirmed 38 separate archaeological sites had been identified in the Skryne valley area, close to the hill of Tara, after route selection had been completed.

The NRA said the archaeological excavation would take one year and the 49 kilometre road from Clonee to north of Kells, with 6 interchanges, could be open by about 2010.

However, councillors said they might not have chosen the selected route if they had known the extent of archaeological sites that would be uncovered.

The former Labour TD for Meath, Cllr Brian Fitzgerald, said the preferred route through Skryne would be subjected to legal challenges and would inevitably be seriously delayed.

Sinn Féin Cllr Joe Reilly asked why the NRA was "in conflict" about the route with some of the most eminent archaeologists in the country. Criticising the NRA for what he said was their insistence on upgrading the road - it was originally to be a dual carriageway - to a motorway, Mr Reilly said it would "take a political decision at Government level to alter the route now".

Cllr Dominic Hannigan (Ind) warned there would be "legal challenges and illegal occupations" on the Skryne side of the proposed route.

Cllr William Carey (FG) said the route could "only be changed by Leinster House, the NRA have got their route".

Mr Oliver Brooks (FF) said said the traffic along the N3 was intolerable and drivers could be 15-20 minutes waiting to emerge from side roads.

Insisting that bypasses of Dunshaughlin, Kells and Navan were overdue, he maintained "people are coming out of the woodwork that I never heard of before, telling us what to do and not to do".

A number of councillors spoke of commuters between Navan and Dublin leaving Navan at about 5 a.m.

Ms Geraldine Fitzpatrick, of the NRA, told the meeting that bypasses would reduce through traffic in Dunshaughlin by 75 per cent; in Navan by 78 per cent and in Kells by 90 per cent.

Ms Mary Deevy, archaeologist with the NRA, said it was always expected that a large amount of archaeological sites would be identified in the Skreen valley area; but she insisted that the NRA had identified four separate road corridors through the Skryne valley area and with these were 10 separate routes. Of 18 separate categories covering safety, archaeology, community impact and other factors, the selected route was the joint-first choice in 14 of the categories.