My findings on Tara were
altered,
- says archaeologist
By - Luke Byrne.
A leading archaeologist employed to survey the M3 Tara
Valley route has claimed her findings were changed to
support the motorway when in fact there was evidence
against it.
In a devastating attack, Jo Ronayne - who was working for
the National Roads Authority - says her findings were
altered before being presented to ministers.
Miss Ronayne, who was an excavation director at the Tara
Valley site in Co. Meath, claims she was told to "change
interpretations" so as to "lessen the potential of
numbers of sites".
And she says she was excluded from NRA meetings in which
her evidence was altered before reports were passed on to
the Government.
The damning allegations will shatter the Government's
defence that it would not change the Tara route because
there is no significant archaeological site in it.
And it will lead to disturbing questions about whether
ministers - and in turn the public or even the courts -
were misled about the archaeological finds.
Miss Ronayne, who was directly employed by NRA
subcontractor Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd,
suggests in an explosive academic article that her role
appeared to have been a sham.
"I didn't realise that the testing and my reports would
be used to facilitate rather than stop the project going
ahead. Or that they don't let you write the truth in the
reports or give you enough time to do a proper job", she
wrote.
The archaeologist - whose sister Maggie, an archaeology
lecturer in NUI Galway, is due to attend today's World
Archaeological Congress in Dublin, remains utterly
disenchanted with how she says her reports were used and
portrayed.
She said: "I held the licence and was responsible for the
work, but the NRA archaeologist would come down and tell
me what I should be doing".
"Directors or field archaeologists working on the sites
were not allowed to attend meetings where decisions were
made by the National Roads Authority's own archaeologists
about how to interpret and present what we were
finding".
She added: "A number of times I was told to change an
interpretation which served to lessen the potential of
numbers of sites. We were also told to excavate large
sections even though you are not supposed to excavate in
the testing phase".
"They edited our reports before the minister saw
them".
In May 2005, following preliminary archaeological reports
made by the NRA, the then environment minister Dick Roche
sanctioned 38 archaeological excavations in the
Tara-Skryne Valley in Co. Meath, effectively approving
the route.
It was reports such as those compiled by Miss Ronayne
that Mr. Roche would have been presented with before he
eventually gave his approval for the project.
Following the decision to go ahead with the road, Miss
Ronayne and a number of other archaeologists refused to
work on the excavations.
Since the route of the M3 was approved, there have been a
number of protests aimed at highlighting the
archaeological value of the stretch of motorway.
However the results of initial test trenching were often
highlighted by advocates of the route of the motorway. In
March 2005, Frank Cosgrave of the Meath Citizens for the
M3 group, told the Joint Committee on Environment and
Local Government: "Nothing that could be described as a
'national monument' has been found".
At the same meeting, Cork TD Billy Kelleher said: "The
argument put forward by the archaeologists with regard to
the richness of the area is a bit of a myth".
Labour Environment spokesperson Joanna Tuffy said: "If
this is true, I think we need to bring in a completely
independent archaeological survey to make sure that
anything that can be salvaged will be".
"At this stage we've already gone too far so we can't go
back".
Miss Tuffy added: "This incident is certainly something I
will raise in the Dáil".
© Irish Mail on Sunday, 29th. June 2008.
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