Time to break the silence on Tara

The long-running Tara/M3 controversy underlines how greedy and selfish we Irish have become since the advent of economic good fortune. A landscape that embodies the very soul of Ireland is about to be decimated.

Tara is on death row. The seat of our ancient High Kings, a staggering 142 of them in historic and pre-historic terms; the spiritual heartland that encapsulates a wealth of hidden and visible cultural treasures, is about to be consigned to the fate that befell the Viking Site at Dublin's Wood Quay in the 1970s.

Opinion polls indicate that two out of every three Irish people want the M3 re-routed away from the Gabhra Valley between the Hills of Tara and Skryne. But this majority will need to express itself and begin objecting in earnest if the road builders and the politicians who have the power to preserve our gravely threatened heritage, are to re-think their plans for Tara.

Where are the street demos? Where are the packed conference halls? Where is the old spirit of resistance we commemorate at Easter?

It does appear that the full implications of what is happening have failed to register sufficiently to fire the passions and patriotic pride of that eerily silent majority.

The oppressive climate of "Mé-Féinism" ushered in by the Celtic Tiger era that has hit voluntary groups of all kinds is also, it seems, holding back a potentially effective national opposition to the M3 madness.

We need to really wake up and smell the coffee: unless we take the fight to the heritage vandals, who are poised to strike, we will suffer the loss of something that can never be retrieved or replaced.

What environmentalists maintain ought to be a UNESCO designated world heritage site, complete with nature trails and idyllic walking tour pathways; a swathe of precious ground once trod by Tara's kings and warriors, will instead be defaced by a sprawling, grotesque dumbbell-shaped motorway junction.

A site described by a state-commissioned research programme in 1995 as a "mosaic of monuments" will be reduced to a deformed shadow of its former status. A landscape fit only for passing through quickly on one's journey elsewhere... or for a macabre twinning arrangement with Afghanistan's bomb-ravaged Tora Bora mountain.

Tranquillity will give way to the non-stop trundle and clatter of heavy traffic, to dark, swirling clouds of poisonous emissions, not to mention a series of ugly construction projects due to spring up around the proposed interchange.

Tara has experienced a foretaste of what may be on the way: The revered National Monument at Rath Lugh has already been damaged by unwieldy earth moving machines.

I find it intriguing that so many major land deals took place along the proposed M3 route BEFORE the route was made public, that so many of the landowners are either Fianna Fail members or supporters, and that many of the largest landowners involved are property developers.

"We don't know what we've got till it's gone" went the celebrated Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi. It continues: "They paved paradise... put up a parking lot".

If we don't rise in revolt against the impending demise of Tara, we may soon be in that unhappy, shameful state of looking back with hand-wringing bitterness and regret at what we've lost... and at what might have been.

Except that it's not a minor "parking lot" that the road builders with the backing of the present Fianna-PD government have in mind for Tara.

They plan to drive a stake through the heart of our land, and they are, I suspect, depending on widespread apathy and ignorance to facilitate them in that act.

Will a future historical account of Tara's destruction begin with the words "While Ireland Slept..."?

John Fitzgerald, Callan, Co Kilkenny