Activist says extra land lets M3 avoid Rath Lugh site

CONSERVATION ACTIVIST Lisa Feeney has said that additional land near the proposed M3 in Co Meath could be made available to the motorway builders in order to avoid encroaching on the Rath Lugh site.

Ms Feeney, who emerged after a 60-hour stay in a tunnel at Rath Lugh, near Tara, at the weekend, said that a review of the route of the motorway in the light of additional land being available had been central to her decision to come out.

Ms Feeney maintained that she had reached a 10-point agreement with the National Roads Authority to leave the tunnel, and while she declined to detail it in its entirety, she said that part of the agreement was that there would be a moratorium on building the motorway at Rath Lugh until April 17th next.

The extra land covers an area up to 40 metres from her tunnel in the Baronstown direction, and 80 metres in the Lismullin direction.

Ms Feeney said that she had agreed on behalf of the conservationists camped at Rath Lugh that the contractor would be allowed to build a "haul road" outside the Rath Lugh preservation area, on which to move machinery.

But she claimed that the roads authority had "admitted" a critical seven metres of land "had not been made available to the contractor" and she said that the acceptance that this land was available formed the basis of a review she and the roads authority would undertake jointly, to assess the potential to move the motorway "as far as possible from Rath Lugh".

Speaking yesterday, Minister for the Environment John Gormley said that he could "give a cast-iron assurance" that the national monument at Rath Lugh would not be damaged by building the motorway along the current alignment.

Mr Gormley said that he had been very pro-active in protecting the monument with temporary and now full preservation orders, and had visited the site recently to inspect the preservation afforded to it. Officials from his department had used maps and aerial photography to satisfy themselves that no damage to the monument had occurred.

A roads authority spokesman said that some 17 metres of land had not been made available to the contractor because the roads authority wanted to restrict the amount of land it would take, in view of the sensitive nature of the landscape.

"We are satisfied that we can build the motorway without disturbing the monument. We won't set a foot on the monument or the larger preservation zone, and then a further safety zone."

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times