The Irish Times reported on 27 December that the Lismullen heritage site has been handed over to a private construction company, and that its destruction may proceed forthwith. The Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, had placed a temporary protection order on the site to placate public opinion, but is now putting into effect his predecessor’s order of 12 June 2007 to have the site demolished following “preservation by record”. This is a term which is misleading by design. The only “preservation by record” which would be of any possible heuristic and historical value would be full excavation. The State’s “preservation by record” does not involve excavation of any kind. It is merely a matter of photographing and measuring the extant findings without further investigation. Therefore, the term is meaningless. It is a double lie, involving neither preservation nor recording. Its only function is public relations, to give an appearance of “concern for heritage”, even while it is being destroyed wholesale.
TaraWatch said in a statement that "The NRA were not supposed to hand over Lismullin until January 8th, but they have done it early to facilitate demolition over the holidays, when nobody is paying attention.” An “expert” group appointed by Gormley to determine how best to proceed alleged that the site was in a “vulnerable” state and was, as Gormley’s department website put it, “too fragile to remain in situ and must be recorded and removed”. Dr Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum, stated that “excavation is desirable and in the best interests of the archaeological remains”. There are conflicting opinions on this matter. The National Roads Authority released a statement in May 2007 stating that “the enclosure at Lismullin has been heavily truncated by past centuries of ploughing, with the result that the sample of surviving features investigated to date are very shallow.” Minister Roche’s order for the destruction of Lismullen noted: “The Minister has taken into account that the monument has been degraded by ploughing in the past, that the surviving features are shallow, that the monument is in a fragile state and that there is a risk of degradation of the monument by natural elements.” [http://tarawatch.org/?page_id=474]
However, the NRA’s justification for the demolition of the national monument raises doubts about the veracity of their “archeological” findings. In their statement of 4 May 2007, released jointly with Meath County Council, the NRA stated: “Its closest parallels are phases of the royal sites of Emain Macha, Co. Armagh and Dún Ailinne, Co. Kildare, although Lismullin is of a much smaller scale, is much less complex and appears to represent a single phase of use.”
[http://tarawatch.org/?page_id=369]
Archaeology magazine, a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America, in selecting Lismullen as one of the 10 most important archaeological discoveries in 2007, called it a “…massive henge, measuring more than 260 feet in diameter, confirm[ing] the long-held belief that the area around the hill contains a rich complex of monuments.“
[http://tarawatch.org/?p=591, 28/12/07]
In a report ‘On the Significance of Lismullin’ in August of 2007, Dr. Ronald Hicks, Department of Anthropology, Ball State University, Indiana noted that Lismullen differed from other royal sites in a number of ways:
“The most obvious is its size, roughly 80 m. in diameter, nearly double the size of the largest timber enclosure at the other sites.
“There is no trace of a surrounding bank and ditch delimiting the sacred area. Rather, the double line of stakeholes seems to have served that purpose. And while it is not inconceivable that they could also have supported seating, the site has another feature that appears much more likely to have served that purpose. As stated in Mary Deevy’s report, “The enclosure is situated at the centre of a natural geomorphological hollow surrounded by a ridge of higher ground which overlooks all sides of the monument, which in turn is surrounded by lower ground” (2007:2). In other words, the surrounding higher ground forms a natural amphitheater. […] Although such a natural amphitheater is not present at the other major royal sites, an example does exist at the inauguration site of Magh Adair in County Clare.
Thus we see at Lismullin a site that is part of a larger ritual complex that shares its National Monument status and that is, moreover, unique in several important characteristics—the size of the enclosure, its lack of a surrounding earthen bank and ditch, and its siting within a natural amphitheater not found at the other major royal sites. All of these would seem to qualify it for preservation in situ.” [http://tarawatch.org/?p=470]
The Tara Foundation has previously drawn attention to Justice Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh’s 1972 ruling that the entire Tara complex was to be regarded as a national monument. As such, the government’s attack on Lismullin is illegal.
In resigning from the “expert group” which legitimised the government’s actions, Conor Newman stated that “the NRA had ignored expert advice that anything discovered in the Tara Skryne Valley was associated with the Hill of Tara, widely acknowledged since early last century.”
TaraWatch rubbished the Minister’s claim that he had no power to overturn the order to destroy the national monument, an order which was made the day before the previous Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat government was dissolved. The Tara Foundation has already pointed out that nothing in the National Monuments Acts or other applicable legislation prevents the Minister from issuing an order to preserve Lismullin. Mr. Gormley stated that, according to advice from the Attorney General, his hands were tied in this regard. If this is true, the Attorney General gave false advice to the Minister. Therefore, even though the National Monuments Act 2004 is unconstitutional, the Minister is acting in breach of it by limiting the powers of his office of his own accord without any legal authority to do so.
TaraWatch also highlighted the European Commission’s case against Ireland on the grounds that there should have been a new Environmental Impact Statement made once Lismullin henge was discovered. The NRA and Meath County Council are blatantly defying both Irish and European law in proceeding with a roadway that has not been through the proper procedures required by European law. The failure to perform an EIS regarding the destruction of Lismullen is a further illegality, since, quite apart from the discovery of the national monument, its desecration was not envisaged in the original scheme for the road. But the contempt for both Irish and European law that has been shown by the NRA and Meath County Council, under the Minister’s direct responsibility, indicates that the elimination of Lismullen was intended from the start. If its discovery had not been leaked by campaigners, the monument’s existence would simply have been covered up by the NRA, in the same spirit in which they have since issued false information intended to minimize its importance and so facilitate its destruction. The criminality that is now taking place in connection with the M3 Motorway was inevitable and foreseeable (and indeed foreseen) when heritage protection law was gutted by the previous Environment Minister, Mr. Roche. However, regardless of his “Green” image, the current Minister is just as willing to participate in these crimes.
Editorial: Lismullen National Monument to be destroyed
