Madam, - With the announcement of a €30 million bill to rid the Tara landscape of 38 archaeological sites that presently stand in the way of the M3 motorway, the National Roads Authority is finally beginning to admit to the true scale of the impact of this ill-conceived development (The Irish Times, October 5th).
Moreover, this estimate is for just 15 kilometres of a 60-kilometre motorway. And while it may be presented as an indication of the NRA's commitment to archaeology, no amount of money will absolve the authority of the guilt of driving a motorway through this unique landscape, and of ignoring its own advisers and a cohort of independent experts who questioned the sanity of building a road through the Tara-Skryne valley in the first instance.
Knowing the scale of some of the sites its intends excavating, and the complexities they will encounter, I suggest that €30 million, and a single year to complete the job professionally, are conservative estimates.
The claim that the NRA "always expected that a large amount of archaeological sites would be identified in the Skryne valley area" (note the omission of the name "Tara") rings both hollow and disingenuous considering how hard the NRA has worked to talk down the impact of the road scheme and rubbish independent expert opinion. In short, the NRA has walked itself - and Meath County Council, and the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government - into this mess. It is wilful bad planning. - Yours, etc.,
CONOR NEWMAN, Department of Archaeology, NUI Galway.