Such is the depth of feeling about any limitation of property rights on this little island that it appears to be one of a long list of issues that were "off message", on the advice of public relations advisers, during the general election campaign.
One canvasser told me last week: "Mention An Taisce or one-off housing, and watch us all turn blue - and that's just the Greens!" Put another way, it is now "safer to be a card-carrying communist" than a member of that particular environmental organisation in parts of what's left of rural Ireland. That observation is made by a group of academics at the NUI Galway Social Science Centre in a new publication on the "dispossession of public space".
The sacred landscape of Tara and the erection of plethora of billboards on streetscapes might not seem like they have a lot in common, but both are selected as examples of the complex Irish attitude to public space at a time of unprecedented economic boom. When the Land Acts eventually put an end to a feudal landholding system, it appears that proprietorship could only be made a "reality" by leaving behind both landlords and Michael Davitt's vision of a more inclusive egalitarian society, editors Terry McDonough, Áine Ní Léime and Lionel Pilkington suggest.
As part of the debate, the trio invited NUIG archaeologist Conor Newman to trace the history of plans to run the M3 through Tara, while geographer Prof Ulf Strohmayer was invited to make some observations at a more local level in Galway, where he lives. As Strohmayer observes, only where it becomes "overly contentious", as in the rich and royal landscape of Tara, does the right to public space appear to matter at all.
Yet "the right to be and to act in public spaces", whether they be churches, schools, or public squares, should "form a core concern of any notion of an Irish civil society", Strohmayer says. The Roman Catholic church in Knocknacarra, Galway's sprawling western suburb, is about the only "planned" civic space in the entire area, he notes. The unimaginatively named "Western Distributor Road", which cuts through the area, is "characteristic of the worst of American urban expansions", leading to "ecologically sealed landscapes populated by people dependent on their cars".
Public debates are taking place in Galway, he says, but too often such debates focus on "aesthetic" rather than structural concerns. He takes Eyre Square as another example. It was the subject of controversy over the proposed design, the threat to trees and the cost of refurbishment to local businesses. It hit national headlines with a bang in July, 2005, when the contractor walked off the site.
Strohmayer compares the old, relatively "unregulated" space in Eyre Square with the new "plaza", which was built at a significant cost over-run. Observing its highly regulated delineation and demarcation, he believes it reflects a "censorship" of activity by business interests which hope to benefit. The redesign "circumvents the kinds of activities seen as desirable in this particular location, with consumption topping the league of desirable outcomes," he notes.
Public transport, or the appalling lack of same, is another issue which the geographer explores. The Labour Party's Michael D. Higgins has been emphasising the opportunities for public participation in another major project bordering Eyre Square - CIE's €750 million redevelopment of Ceannt Station. Strohmayer warns that Galway (like the rest of Ireland) is now at a crossroads - with several routes leading in the direction of the worst of US urban design.
He observes that that the forces of nationalism and religion appear to have "spent their intuitive mass appeal" and that immigration is producing a more culturally diverse island. "If a genuine civil society, and not just a globally operating and largely unchallenged capitalism, is to become the guiding beacon for the general public", we need to "ask what kind of society we want", he says.
Archaeologist Conor Newman has probably been asking himself the same questions, and his personal account of the struggle to save Tara has a particular resonance at a time when those who fought so hard to save it have found themselves in a sort of nightmarish endgame - pitted against "official Ireland" and the "needs" of the commuters of Co Meath. Last week's scuffles with gardaí on the construction site mirror similar experiences of north Mayo residents, equally concerned about their own environment, close to the Corrib gas site in Bellanaboy, Co Mayo.
"On the summer solstice of 2005, thousands of ordinary people assembled on Tara," Newman writes. "They brought this wonderful and holy place to life. By their presence, many of them were making a quiet and dignified protest against the clumsy, developer-led vandalism being visited upon ancient Ireland. The strength of this voice continues to be the broad church of people who have united against an authority that would drive a motorway through the sacred and historic precinct of Tara.
"Informal and spontaneous though the genesis of this movement may be, together the protesters comprise a very real voice and politicians would do well to listen."
Uninhabited Ireland: Tara, the M3 and Public Spaces in Galway is published by Arlen House press.