Statement by Vincent Salafia, Carrickminder, PRO Save Tara/Skryne Valley Campaign on the proposed motorway through Tara.

'All interference with national monuments of Ireland is now presumed illegal and must cease immediately, until the Government has passed valid regulations governing such action. No Ministerial order, or grant of planning permission, authorising interference with a national monument, can be justfiably relied upon.Any attempt to disfigure any national monument, particularly the Hill of Tara, will have to answer to the citizens of Ireland, in their Courts.

The High Court has declared the system regulating destruction of national monuments unconstitutional, since it did not comply with the National Monuments Act, 1930 (as amended). The ‘technical glitch’ mentioned by Judge Kearns referred to the Government’s attempt to dilute the protections contained in Section 14 of the Act, governing Ministerial Consent, not the Act itself.

The 1994 Amendment to the Act, drafted in response to Wood Quay, was designed to avoid the exact scenario we face today at Carrickmines. It required three state agencies to make the important decision to interfere with a national monument. By reducing the requirement to two actors by statutory instrument in 2002 the Government ignored the central democratic principle of checks and balances within the Act. When these two actors failed to perform their duties properly, there was no third actor to check it.

One cannot help but wonder if the drafting of the 2002 statutory instrument was linked to the ‘sudden’ closure of Duchas, The Heritage Service, in 2002? If so, it would appear that our own Government unconstitutionally conspired to dismantle, by stealth, all legal protections for heritage, long before Carrickmines Castle blew up.'

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