The Tara Foundation

Government misleads about UNESCO World Heritage Status for Tara

According to the new Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Dick Roche, the Government has no intention of seeking World Heritage Status for the Tara-Skreen Valley. This was a foregone conclusion in any case, and such status would be at best token, but the publicity accorded the region and the perfidious plan put forward by the National Rifle Association (oops, my typo - I mean of course the National Roads Association) would increase awareness worldwide both of the sheer volume of sites in this region, and in what contempt the Irish ‘elite’ holds Irish history and culture, and by implication, ordinary Irish people. The reasons given by the Minister for refusing even to submit Tara as part of the ‘Tentative List’ of sites for inclusion on the World Heritage List are that UNESCO is limiting the number of applications it is accepting each year, and that greater attention is paid to ‘developing countries’ (Ireland being, presumably, a ‘developed country’ - well, a recolonized one anyhow), in order to achieve ‘a more balanced regional representation’, or guff to that effect. Does the Minister believe that there is a kind of democracy of heritage in operation? If only there were.

Well, Ireland’s representation is anything but balanced: at present, precisely two sites in Ireland are recognized as World Heritage Sites: Skellig Michael on Achill, and ‘the Bend of the Boyne’. The vagueness of the latter designation seems to have been deliberate, in order to separate the Boyne region from that of Tara-Skryne (which has not stopped the NRA from building a suspension bridge through the Boyne Valley), and leave the Tara region open for development. Make no mistake: the ideologues in Government don’t care about Ireland or its heritage. Their main concern is to provide earners for their associates in the property industry, and that foreign multinationals continue to lay the country waste economically and environmentally, all in the name of ‘globalization’ and ‘inward investment’, phrases which mean the exact opposite of what they say. But these people are very careful about the words they use, because it is always impolite to state the truth when something more soothing will do. Halliburton, despite its involvement in domestic fraud, and the fact that it is a military contractor which has constructed barracks in Iraq and Afghanistan and the torture centre in Guantanamo Bay, is a lead contender for the M3 contract, by the same logic by which the ‘President’ of America, Bomber Bush, is ‘our friend’ despite being a war criminal. Abduct Bush and bring him to the Hague, and then we might talk.

UNESCO, oddly enough, do not mention any of Minister Roche’s reservations. According to them, it is entirely up to a particular government to submit a heritage site as part of a ‘Tentative List’ for inclusion on the World Heritage List. So this Government, in inventing these pretexts, have stated that their intention is to leave the Tara region open as a development zone, regardless of its historical and cultural significance. In a similar spirit, most buildings in Dublin of any historical or aesthetic value were destroyed in the 1960s and 70s, during a development craze similar to today’s though on a smaller scale. At the same time, tokens of the connection with Britain, and more specifically, Britain’s occupation of and wars against Ireland, have been sedulously maintained, and even in some cases restored. What this expresses is a desire to return to the good old days pre-1916, when Ireland eagerly participated in England’s imperial wars, except that now England has a bigger brother to call the shots and allot rewards. As long as Tara remains, evidence of civilizations prior and superior to contemporary Anglo-American cultural fascism likewise remains as a challenge to the dogs and their dogmas. Hence the expressed desire of an unnamed member of the NRA to build the M3 right over the top of the Hill of Tara. The Government, certainly, have abdicated their responsibility to the Irish people, giving not only legal powers but a legal blank slate to an unaccountable body, specifically so that this can happen. These people will not rest until Tara has been destroyed.