The Department of the Environment has asked the Garda to investigate and pursue a prosecution under the National Monuments Act over damage during land reclamation work to part of a large pre-historic coastal Dún Mór fort on the Dingle Peninsula in Co Kerry.
The decision follows a preliminary archaeological report to officials of the Department. Damage to the fort included the "flattening" of some of the linear fortification work.
It came to light when a local tour guide, Mr Con Moriarty, arrived with a group of American tourists to show them the landmark fort on the Dunmore headland, a favourite tourist spot, on Slea Head overlooking the Blaskets.
A ministerial preservation order has now been placed on the whole site, (the full extent of which runs to around 80 acres), a spokesman for the Minister, Mr Cullen, said yesterday.
The first of a number of "preliminary" archaeological assessments of the damage to Dún Mór has found that an 82-metre section of a double earthen bank with intervening ditch, "has been levelled in the recent past", according to the Department.
The damaged part may belong to the later pre-historic period or, at the very latest, the early medieval period, the report has found. The Dún Mór fort is believed to have been in use for an extensive period, from around 1,000 BC to the early Christian period.
Other damage is being assessed by consultant archaeologists and this weekend a senior archaeologist from the heritage service is to inspect the site.
The owner of the land, Mr Denis Dowd of Kilcooley, Ballydavid has not been available for comment. One family member indicated as far as she was concerned no damage had been done to the main part of the fort itself.
The heritage section of the Department had been in discussion with Mr Dowd, and there were "detailed discussions" as to the significance of the monument, and how the land could be farmed without interference with it.