Minister attempting to remove
- basic State rights and protections
Dear sir - The challenge currently underway in the High
Court to the lunatic M3 Motorway has brought out an
important fact that the corporate media have, as is their
wont with important facts, ignored: that the present
administration has done more to undermine heritage
protection than any in the Republic's history.
On January 12th, Gerard Hogan SC argued that the National
Monuments (Amendment) Act 2004 permits the Minister for
the Environment to order the sale or destruction of any
monument, heritage site or artefact in the country, if
said Minister deems this to be "in the national
interest", the definition of this term not being
provided.
This incredible amendment to previous National Monuments
law was introduced as emergency legislation by the
previous incumbent, Martin Cullen, now Transport
Minister, in response to the Supreme Court decision in
2003 that, not only was the National Roads Authority's
wish to destroy Carrickmines Castle illegal, but that
Government has a Constitutional duty to safeguard
heritage.
The contempt of the minister for the highest court in the
land, as expressed by his evisceration of the National
Monuments legislation, is symptomatic of the PD-led
administration's contempt for the Constitution, or more
precisely, their rage at the existence of a legal
document with the temerity to presume that there are such
things as basic rights and protections. It is also a sign
of their contempt for the country and its history that
they should see themselves entitled to act so openly.
The arrogation to the minister's possession of all
national monuments and heritage sites has been done with
a distinct aim in mind: by removing all State monitoring
of and guidelines for archaeological excavation, the
minister can now permit for-profit archaeological firms
to work the necessary destruction, without responsibility
for this destruction accruing to the State, or to the
office and person of the minister. Once the corporate
media and other vocal interest groups have succeed in
normalising the transference from archaeology as research
and preservation to archaeology as something old and
useless that gets in the way of progress, the project can
proceed, with expressions of triumphalist scorn from
Cullen and Co. for old thinkers who stand in the way of
the inevitable future.
The problem is that the M3, and the roads programme as a
whole, are simply an excuse for spending large amounts of
money in a way that does not benefit those who actually
have to pay for them. The M3 will enable drivers to reach
the glut of traffic on the M50 in less time than before,
but that is all.
What is to be done about the increasing dependency on
private ownership of petroleum-powered GM or Ford
products and the non-existence of a public transport
network in the country is, simply, not the
administration's business. Their business is to create
"investment opportunities for land speculators in the
Boyne Valley and on any rezoneable land in the Greater
Dublin Area". This is a logical step for IBEC's political
wing the PDs, a party which no one elected to Government
and enjoys three per cent support, yet dictates
Government policy and controls its major ministries.
But there are bigger games at work. One of the candidates
for the M3 contract, Brown and Root, formerly Kellogg,
Brown and Root, is well known for its greatest cash-cow
yet, the Dublin Port Tunnel, perhaps the most appropriate
symbol of expensive futility imaginable. Brown and Root
is the construction subsidiary of Halliburton, a
corporation that is less than popular in America owing to
investigations by the Pentagon and Congress into its
practices, including allegations of massive fraud,
bribery and insider trading.
But a friend in need is a friend indeed, and what better
way to support ailing corporations than for client
administrations to give them tax holidays and vastly
expensive prestige projects like the Dublin Port Tunnel
and the M3? And what better way to make this possible
than to clear away a few inconvenient legislative
obstacles?
Considering Minister McDowell's willingness to trample on
the legal rights of Irish citizens and to sign defence
"agreements" with the US without bringing them before the
Oireachtas, it seems that the IBEC administration's
policy is to ignore the Constitution wherever possible
until the great day dawns when it can be cast aside. And
"who will stand upright in the winds that would blow
then?"
Yours,
Andrew McGrath,
Secretary,
The Tara Foundation,
16 Glenmore Road,
Dublin 7.
© The Meath Chronicle, 4th. February 2006.
