Oh, that there had been a
Squeak
- from Greens on Tara
By - Diarmuid Doyle.
You don't have to be an avid environmentalist to support
Lisa Feeney, the 26 year-old psychology graduate who, at
the time of writing, is somewhere under the surface of
Co. Meath. chained to a car jack, reading a book by
Padraig Pearse and holding up the construction of the M3
motorway. There is no requirement on you to believe in
the preservation of the treasures and history of the
Tara-Skryne Valley in order to admire her idealism and
wish her success. The belief that governments and
developers have a responsibility to their country's
history does not have to course like blood through your
veins for you to see that she and her fellow protesters
are doing the right thing. In fact, you can be all for
the building of motorways and still see that the woman
has a point.
It seems unlikely that Feeney, known to her friends as
Squeak, will achieve the aim of the protest, which is
that a reasonable distance will be left between the new
road and the national monument that exists at Rath Lugh.
A type of environmental vandalism has been a feature of
the whole M3 process and has been embraced by
organisations and individuals as diverse as the National
Roads Authority, Fine Gael, Noel Dempsey, Dick Roche and
the environment minister John Gormley. There seems no
reason to think any of these will undergo a kind of
Pauline conversion on the road to Kells. Why then, you
might ask, should we support environmentalists in their
game of hide and Squeak deep in the bowels of Co. Meath?
If the building of the road is now an inevitability, why
should we sympathise with what might seem to many people
like a pointless waste of time, one which the NRA claims
could cost the taxpayer as much as €330,000 a
week?
The answers to those questions are closely linked to the
actual necessity of the M3 motorway, which has never been
established in any forum. For sure, there are occasional
traffic snarl-ups on the current road and there are
clearly many more cars travelling along the route than
there used to be. But the construction of a motorway at a
cost of hundreds of millions of euros, which will be
tolled twice (and which is already behind schedule),
always seemed like an excessive response to the
problem.
A few weeks ago, when the Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney -
importantly, but two years too late - commented on the
building of the M3 and the accompanying destruction of
the surrounding valley, he made a number of salient
points. Not all of them had to do with the environment.
In an interview with the BBC, Heaney said the motorway,
"literally desecrates an area. I mean the word means to
desacrilise and for centuries the Tara landscape and the
Tara sites have been regarded as part of the sacred
ground".
He referred to the 1916 proclamation of independence
(hence, perhaps, Squeak's subterranean reading matter)
and the way in which it addressed the Irish people in the
name of dead generations."If ever there was a place that
deserved to be preserved in the name of dead generations
from prehistoric times, it is Tara", he said.
"The traces on Tara are in the grass, in the earth. They
aren't spectacular like temple ruins in Greece but they
are about origin, they're about beginning, they're about
the mythological spiritual source, something that gives
the country its distinctive spirit".
In the same radio programme, Jonathan Foyle, the chief
executive of the World Monuments Fund, which placed Tara
on its list of endangered sites last year, described the
entire area around the hill as "the equivalent of
Stonehenge, Westminster Abbey, for its royal
associations, and Canterbury for its Christian
associations, rolled into one". And yet, he pointed out,
it was being destroyed "to shave 20m minutes off a
journey time".
In the comments of those two people you have the case
against the M3 in its current form. If Heaney's argument
is a little too metaphysical or airy fairy for your
tastes, then you can get something practical and tangible
out of Foyle's comments. This massive motorway, this
costly folly, this ugly monstrosity, is being foisted on
one of the country's most historic areas so people can
get to the nearest Dublin traffic jam 20 minutes earlier
than they do today.
Not all people, by any means. The 20-minute saving
referred to by Foyle will apply only to people who drive
the full length of the motorway - the vast minority. As
you drive along towards Dublin, the time saved becomes
less and could easily be achieved by sensible use of
bypasses and road improvements. But we live in Ireland in
a builders' paradise, and so it was decided for the sake
of 1,200 seconds to desecrate 1,200 years and more of
history.
Lisa Feeney's protest highlights the massive con job that
is being perpetrated on the Irish people, just as her
nickname reminds us that there has not been a squeak of
protest from the self-styled environmentalists of the
Green party about what has been happening to an area of
the country they once purported to defend. That point can
never be made too strongly.
I pass along the N3 each morning. Most of the delays to
traffic these days are caused by the construction of the
M3, by the stop/go traffic systems, and by the huge
number of lorries, trucks, and diggers entering and
exiting the various sites along the route. It is
fascinating to watch something so huge come together, but
deeply frustrating that it is being done in the name of
progress and modernity and getting on with things, as
though making it to the Blanchardstown tailback a few
minutes early was some kind of achievement, some noble
ambition.
The M3 motorway will symbolise the new Ireland of riches
and business and hurry and tokenism, just as the
Tara-Skryne Valley reminds us that we have a national
story far removed from multimillion euro vanity projects.
Lisa Feeney and her fellow protestors will lose their
battle to give that story practical meaning, just as they
have lost all the other disputes on the road to the M3.
But by suggesting that there is an Ireland beyond
concrete and commuting and motorways and toll bridges,
they deserve great credit and all best wishes for a safe
ending to their protest.
© The Sunday Tribune, 16th. March 2008.
Related Articles:
Protesters
vow to step up M3 campaign after deal struck.
Trouble and Squeak.
Tara protester emerges from her underground "mole"
hole.
Dr.
Jonathan Foyle discusses Tara and Seamus Heaney's BBC
Documentary. (Audio)
Squeak calls off her Tara protest.
Squeak surfaces after dad's plea.
Squeak
gets a dig-out...thanks to Bertie.
Squeak
out of her hole.
Activists call on Minister to visit Tara.
