Excavation of Viking site being considered

The Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, plans to decide shortly on whether to excavate a major Viking settlement discovered during work on the Waterford city bypass.

The Minister visited the site at Woodstown at the weekend with the chief archaeologist from the Department's heritage division. Up to 350 artefacts, including nails, weights, measures, chains and bones, have been recovered from the site, which is believed to have been home to a ninth-century Viking river fortress.

The National Museum of Ireland and the Heritage Council have recommended that the site be fully excavated before the €300 million bypass proceeds. An Taisce and some other conservationists, however, want the road moved and the site developed as a local tourist attraction.

Dr Mark Clinton of An Taisce's National Monuments and Antiquities Committee said: "The site at Woodstown is a unique and chance find of the very highest international cultural and archaeological significance. A comparable site is exceptionally rare - even in Scandinavia, the Viking homeland. Ireland has been given an opportunity to make amends for the destruction of Wood Quay in the 1980s - an action that has resulted in the loss of millions of euros of potential revenue to our tourist economy."

He noted a Viking settlement excavated in York, in England, had created a tourist industry worth about €500 million a year, attracting some four million visitors annually, "despite its relatively poor Viking remains".

A spokesman for Mr Cullen said: "We are continuing to study the options. There are views still coming in from various bodies."