Activist says extra land
- lets M3 avoid Rath Lugh site
By - Tim O'Brien.
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".
© The Irish Times, 20th. March 2008.
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