As somebody who works in highway design, I gotta say I’m stunned by this poor decision.
The damage done to Ireland’s most important historical site would be quite serious.
How much public support/opposition is there for this in Ireland?
No idea about support/opposition, I just read about it on Wikipedia. The environmentalists choice of route is too far away from the towns its supposed to serve apparantly.
“Pat, y’know that Hill of Tara?”
“D’y mean that Temair, the seat of the High Kings of Ireland, the sacred dwelling place of the gods, and where 'tis said that Saint Patrick confronted the Pagans, bless him?”
“Aye, that’s the place. Let’s build a fooking great motorway through it.”
There has been a lot of controversy. I am not an expert on it, but the two opposing perspectives are as represented in your link. This page from the national television station’s website has links to broadcasts and short articles on the issue.
This controversy was quite similar to the recent one about building a motorway through Carrickmines Castle.
The shower of cunts in power don’t give a swinging fuck about heritage. It’s about money and convenience.
:mad:
I saw this story this morning and I’m puzzled. Pepper Mill and I visited Tara first thing off the plane to Dublin several years back. There is a vast amount of nothing surrounding it. Ireland, in general, has very thin, very small roads compared to American experience, with very little beside them until you get into the cities, and with vast stretches of farmland surrounding them. Tara is sitting in the midst of such vast stretches of farmland, with two rrelatively small roads running by it. So:
1.) there’s absolutely no need that I can see for a highway to have to run anywhere near Tara. certainly not close enough to endanger the historic site.
2.) even if they did build a road within a mile of the place, it would be, by American standards, at least, a relatively small thing.
no way can I imagine an Irish highway chipping away at the sacred hills of tara unless someone went out of their way to put it there deliberately.
But … but … I’m going to Ireland next year, after wanting to for about twenty years.
Figures somebody’d ruin the one thing I wanted to see the most. I’m going to sit in a corner and mutter now.
for a start, it’s not like they’re running the motorway over the hill itself. the proposed motorway will be roughly a mile from the hill.
the problem is that the motorway will go through some archeologically (and culturally) important areas.
As to why? I’ve no idea. there were alternate routes, but I suspect that it would be cheaper to do it as they are than trying to organise Compulsory Purchase orders for the land which could really ring up the bills for the project.
A motorway is needed in the area, but not necessarily where they plan to build it.