With repeated assurances from the NRA, and on the NRA's behalf by practically every State body, that they have in mind the wellbeing and comfort of everyone in Ireland who has no choice but to drive in order to get anywhere, that they are enthusiastic in their devotion to uncovering the secrets of our ancient past (given that many of their projects, by ill-chance maybe, seem to end up going through particularly sensitive historical and ecological regions), and in short that they can be trusted always to make the best compromise between difficult alternatives, it might be interesting to have a look at what the NRA is made of.

Considering that any company responsible for large infrastructural developments is aware that significant finds may be made which can result in the plan having to be altered out of a wish to preserve them, one would expect the board of the NRA to consist of experts in the area of archaeology and historical research.

But not a bit of it. None of the NRA's plans has been altered because of an archaeological find. On the contrary, the M50 extension was planned so that a portion of it would be built directly over the Carrickmines complex, and when objectors took the case to court, the archaeological firm employed by the NRA fought those who wished to preserve the complex all the way to the Supreme Court, and misrepresented both the size and significance of the complex and the impact the construction of a motorway might have on it.

Exceeding themselves, the NRA then proposed to build a motorway straight through the Tara-Skryne Valley, inside the zone of archaeological protection established by the Discovery Programme, refused to change the route, against the advice of their own archaeological consultants, and then went so far as to defend their proposal to destroy irreplaceable cultural heritage by claiming that, were it not for the "archaeology" being done under the aegis of the NRA, none of the sites that had been discovered would have been found.

But the problem with this is that the archaeological firms being employed by the NRA are only surveying sites along the path of the motorway, and only sites that are already known to exist. Furthermore, the method being employed is a crude, destructive excavation process, known as "test trenching", involving the use of heavy machinery. All the sites along the route will be destroyed, regardless of what is known to be there, what is there but not yet known about, and what might be found during the excavation. In their Environmental Impact Statement, the NRA misrepresented the number of sites that were likely to be affected by the motorway, citing the "revised" opinion of their archaeological consultants, who decided that the motorway would, after all, have no significant impact on the heritage landscape in the Tara-Skryne Valley; no significant impact, that is, other than to carve it in two.

The NRA have been supported politically in this activity all along the line, to the extent of having some sixty years' worth of archaeological protection legislation scrapped to allow them to engage in cultural destruction unhindered. And as for the presence of experts on their board of management, there is no shortage of them: an expert auctioneer, an expert building contractor, four expert council members and an expert county manager, an expert hotelier and an expert health board officer. It is anyone's guess what people in such positions are doing on a board that has been given complete power to decide, as though it were their property, what becomes of Irish cultural heritage.

Here, for the record, is the membership of the National Roads Authority.

Peter Malone, Chairman, NRA

Michael Tobin, Chief Executive, NRA

Jimmy Farrelly, Former Secretary General, Department of Environment and Local Govt.

Raymond Potterton, Auctioneer

Frances Boyle, Thurles Town Council

Eimear McAuliffe, Health Board Officer

Jenny Kent, Hotelier

John Murphy, Assistant Secretary, Dept. of Transport

Risteard Ó Lionaird, Civil Engineer

Brendan O'Mara, Bruce Shaw Chartered Surveyors

Niall Sweeney, Offaly County Manager

Ted Murphy, Cork County Council

Connie Ni Fhatharta, Galway County Council

Professor Frank Convery, UCD

© The Tara Foundation, 2004