A book of essays by two NUI Galway academics questions the privatisation of public lands and public access to scenic landscapes.
One of the authors of Uninhabited Ireland: Tara, the M3 and Public Spaces in Galway, archaeologist Conor Newman, was appointed director of the Discovery Programme's archaeological survey of Tara in 1992, and has been central to the debate over the routing of the M3 motorway through the landscape.
In a personal account of selected stages of the Tara controversy, Mr Newman suggests that there is "mild embarrassment, based on ignorance, that this most famous of places, the seat of no less than the High Kings of Ireland, appears today to be nothing more than a collection of mute, grassy earthworks".
Only where the use of particular spaces becomes "overtly contentious", as with Tara, does space appear to matter in 21st century Ireland, he notes.
He is critical of a management approach which endeavoured to "landscape" the area, as if it was a "public park, where the bumps in the ground" were "potential hazards in the path of an increasingly litigious and urbanised public".
In his essay, Prof Ulf Strohmayer cites several examples in Galway, such as the controversial "refurbishment" of Eyre Square.
The editors of the series of essays, Terry McDonough, Áine Ní Léime and Lionel Pilkington of NUIG, analyse the debate over dispossession of public spaces, and the reasons for criticism of groups such as An Taisce over its opposition to one-off rural houses.
However, as the controversy over the planned despoliation of the Tara landscape makes clear, there is a "perilous disconnection between that national identity and cultural heritage and the physical space of Ireland", the authors note.
