The late 1990s protest against road widening on the Dublin-Rosslare route through the ancient oak woodland at the Glen of the Downs in Co Wicklow was undoubtedly the most dramatic and most publicised environmental protest in Ireland in the 1990s: the camera crews rolled in to film self-styled eco-warriors in their tree houses, canopy-level walkways, tarpaulin tents and underground tunnels.
The colourful international group of protesters was living outdoors among the deciduous trees in “non-violent direct action” to prevent their destruction as part of an EU-funded £18 million road-widening scheme along the N11 just south of Kilmacanogue. The N11 was part of the E01 European route from Larne to Rosslare, which required upgrading from a single-lane road to a dual-carriageway.
The protesters camped out for almost three years from May 1997, holding up the road project with a High Court judicial review and a subsequent Supreme Court appeal – both of which they lost. The dual carriageway was finally completed in 2003 with reduced speed limits of 80km imposed on traffic passing through the glen to this day.
Úna Ní Bhroin was 23 when she joined the group of protesters in their “bender” tents, made from bent hazel rods covered in tarpaulin. “I enjoyed living outdoors, being part of an important environmental movement and meeting gentle people mostly my age who wanted to have less impact on the planet – people who weren’t obsessed with material wealth, status, cars, houses, night clubbing and substance abuse,” she says.
The backdrop of the Celtic Tiger was significant as many of the young protesters – from Ireland, the UK, Europe and as far as Australia – felt they didn’t belong to the turbo-charged consumerist society that had emerged around them.
The Glen of the Downs nature reserve – also designated a special area of conservation – was an ideal setting for them to vocalise their opposition to the increasingly dominant economy-first philosophy which held little or no regard to the environmental consequences of infrastructural projects. When the authorities arrived to challenge them, the protesters chained themselves to metal bars inside barrels filled with concrete or climbed high up into trees earmarked for felling. Some hid out in tunnels built deep into the slopes of the woodland.
The mixed woodland in the glacial valley with steep sides of sessile oak, ash and holly trees – home to squirrels, sika deer, foxes and badgers – also gave the protesters an escape from urban realities and a beautiful – if often damp – place to spend time with like-minded individuals, sitting around a campfire, debating issues and playing music.
“I was young, political and unemployed and just back from a protest against a proposed road through woodland in Fairmile, Devon,” explains Gavin Harte, who invited local politicians to the site and worked on aspects of the group’s High Court judicial review.
In one of several publicity stunts, the protesters held a festival the day the Tour de France passed through the glen in 1998 during its first ever stage held outside of France. Musicians frequently visited to show their solidarity with the protesters, and while some locals said they were a nuisance – doing more damage to the woods by their presence – many brought food, timber and other supplies to the encampment.
“I didn’t live down there all the time but I helped build one of the first tree houses,” recalls Harte. He acknowledges that by 20th-century standards, the set-up wasn’t “civilised”. “But, if you go back 200 years, it would have been perfectly normal to live like that. This was a tribe of people, a place to hang out for lots of different types of people, some of whom were down on their luck or even on the run,” he says.
Looking back now, Harte – a sustainability consultant – remains proud of his involvement. “We were an expensive inconvenience in the minds of the government and Wicklow County Council. I wouldn’t be who I am now if I hadn’t done it. I still believe protest is a rite of passage for young people. Unfortunately, many young people are too busy or too distracted to protest now.”
After his involvement in the Glen of the Downs, Harte went on to manage Ireland’s first eco-village in Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary, for four years. A self-described anarchist, he believes nature is still often forgotten about. “There is a repeating pattern in Ireland. In the bad times, it’s too expensive to do anything about it and in the good times, it’s a nuisance getting in the way. There is a very flawed understanding about how society functions in the long term and we are wedded to a cycle of boom and bust,” he argues.
Ní Bhroin also feels the experience formed her. She was one of the 13 protesters who were sent to prison because they wouldn’t sign an agreement to vacate the glen following the failed Supreme Court appeal at the end of January 2000.
“After we lost the appeal, I moved back down there full-time in my own tree house. When Wicklow County Council arrived to fell trees, I stood in front of machines and workers, halting the progress,” she explains. And of her prison experience, she says: “We were in the newest prison in Europe [the Dóchas Mountjoy Female Prison had just opened in 1999]. It wasn’t torture. I did feel threatened once or twice but I was quite edgy myself and had quite a bit of anger.”
Claudia Dallek, originally from Hamburg but living in Ireland since the mid-1990s, also went to jail for contempt of court. “It was my first time to live on a protest site, although I was already politically active in Germany. I’m still working for the environment, although I’m getting paid for it now,” says Dallek, who is finance manager with Friends of the Earth environmental NGO.
Ní Bhroin has no regrets: “I’m still proud of what I did. I was a bit burnt out in the end but I feel it was a touchstone for the environmental movement in Ireland.” Ni Bhroin went on to set up Beechlawn Organic Farm with her husband, Padraig Fahy in Ballinasloe, Co Galway. Within a few months of leaving the glen, she was pregnant with her first child and subsequently had three more children.
”I wanted to become part of the solution rather than fight the problem,” she says. “And I realised that I’d never put my health and safety at risk for at least another 20 years. There was a certain sadness that I wouldn’t be able to sacrifice myself for the environment. I think people still don’t value our native trees.”
Greystones resident Nuala Ahern was a Green Party MEP during the protests. “As the tree huggers were colourful and within an hour’s drive from Montrose, the TV crews descended on the glen. The current affairs reporters were only interested in the story of a hard, no-compromise standoff. They weren’t interested in the hard work by Alex Perkins, who submitted objections to the road-widening scheme under the EU Habitats Directive over three years,” she says.
According to Ahern, the initial Wicklow County Council/National Roads Authority plans were very destructive to the glen and through the EU Habitats Directive, Perkins worked hard to reduce its impact. “As an MEP, I felt that if Wicklow County Council was getting money from Europe, it had to observe its directives,” she says.
Reflecting back on the time, she says she was conscious of the sincerity of the protesters and met several of them. “But we knew they wouldn’t stop the dual carriageway. There was already a road through the glen. Our aim was to preserve as much as possible of the natural habitat.”
George Jones, Fine Gael councillor, Greystones resident and chair of Wicklow County Council at the time, says there wasn’t the same focus on environmental issues then as there is now. “I’ve seen comments that there was huge public support for them, but the vast majority of people who contacted me were opposed to the protesters,” he says.
“I was concerned that by setting up camps and lighting fires, they could have done as much damage to the trees as Wicklow County Council was going to do. And the problem now is that because of the restricted nature of the improvements made then, a bus corridor couldn’t be put in. If you look at the traffic delays through the glen in the mornings, I think it should have been widened twice as much as it was.”
Ecologist and environmental consultant, Richard Nairn, was on the team which carried out an environmental impact assessment of the nature reserve in 1991 on behalf of the engineering company designing the road.
“I took an objective view, and from what I identified the road project was not likely to make a significant impact. Very few trees were to be taken out – mainly non-native trees like sycamore, beech and laurel and a few native trees. All kinds of claims were made that the road cut into the water table and that the entire glen would die. There was no evidence for that at all,” explains Nairn.
Wicklow County Council said at the time that a total of 1,700 trees would be felled, which represented two per cent of the woodland.
Nairn recalls that the controversy erupted after planning permission was granted. “They [the protesters] didn’t want to see the other side and the publicity was all on their side. There was very little coverage of the value of the proposals to make the road safer; these facts were overlooked,” adds Nairn, who gave evidence in the High Court case about the ecology of the woods.
He also explains how the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which manages the site, collected acorns from the trees. “Some didn’t survive but there are oak trees there now which were planted at the time,” he says.
In recent months, the Glen of the Downs is back in the news because a substantial tract of farmland adjacent to the woods is for sale. An online petition led by Social Democrat TD Jennifer Whitmore and signed by more than 5,000 people is calling on the Government to double the size of the Glen of the Downs by purchasing 80 hectares of land that adjoins it and the nearby Kindlestown Woods. And not an eco-warrior in sight.
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis
