Mark Clinton argues that the precious heritage of Carrickmines Castle could easily have been saved.
This country wears its heritage like a badge of honour. To millions of visitors Ireland is its heritage. These travellers are the lifeblood of our vital tourist industry.
Since the scandalous destruction of Viking Dublin at Wood Quay, successive governments have put in place a comprehensive system for the protection of our heritage, with the encouragement of the EU.
Unfortunately, the Government appears hell-bent on dismantling this protective system. It began with the abolition of the entire Department of Arts and Heritage in June 2002. Since then each of the official heritage protection agencies has been effectively neutered. The Heritage Council saw resignations of key directors in protest against that body's inertia. The National Monuments section of Dúchas is reduced to the role of development facilitator under a Minister intent on reducing its role still further.
The Minister's overruling of his National Monument officials' correct concern about a four-storey hotel beside Trim Castle is just one of many examples where the professional advice of highly knowledgeable experts has been disregarded by a politician with no training or qualifications in the field.
Official Philistinism is also exemplified in the plans for a major motorway through a heritage landscape representing the very historic genesis of our country: the valley between the hills of Tara and Skreen. Forthcoming anti-heritage moves now signalled appear to include removal of the National Museum of Ireland's role in safeguarding the country's archaeology, An Taisce's loss of Government funding, effectively ending its ability to oppose threats to heritage sites, and continued lack of funding for local authorities to protect heritage in their areas.
Those entrusted with our nation's future display not only ignorance, lack of imagination and ill-planning in the name of progress, but present such deficiencies as a "heritage or development" ultimatum. This is a lie. It runs directly contrary to their espoused policies for sustainable development in the internationally recognised definition of the term. And this is the stage on which the Carrickmines Castle controversy is set.
The castle's fate epitomises this deceit. The routing of the M50 through its historic remains has already been the subject of a Supreme Court decision which recognised the site as a national monument, and continues to be investigated by the Flood/Mahon Tribunal and the European Commission for corrupt and anti-heritage practices. The Government's lie is that there never was any possible option for building the road, except through this site.
A recent Irish Times editorial baldly claimed that "Carrickmines Castle would have remained in almost total obscurity if the M50 had not crossed its site". This is ridiculous given that as early as 1901 F.E. Ball published a detailed account of the history and importance of the castle, a status reaffirmed by present-day publications by such leading historians as Dr Emmett O'Byrne (UCD) and under the auspices of Dr Seán Duffy (TCD) which graphically detail the wealth of data available on the site.
Indeed, had the enormous reservoir of readily available data on the castle been properly assessed at planning stage, there is no doubt that the relevant heritage protection agencies could not have allowed interference with the site.
The site is a unique monument. It has its origins in the pre-Norman period when it functioned as a rural settlement. Nine hundred years of continuous settlement followed, leaving us with a complex that covers eight acres of unparalleled physical remains, including the castle's fortifications, a medieval village, a fairgreen, a medieval road and river crossing.
Carrickmines is a time capsule of the medieval period.
It has produced the largest collection of medieval objects from a rural site in the history of Irish archaeology, a unique example of Pale fortification, and the only historically documented massacre site, where Irish men, women and children were slaughtered by Crown forces in 1642. It has produced evidence of the attempted burning of the Mooney farm by British forces in 1798.
Not only does the site represent the final resting place of the Irish who died fighting the Crown in the 17th century, it also provides the visitor with 900 years of visible history manifested in its surviving elements. A heritage park, coupled with informed reconstruction at Carrickmines Castle, would produce the finest medieval attraction in Ireland.
As a veteran of the Wood Quay excavation, I am bemused at the much-extolled concession of removing a tiny section of 14th-century castle wall for reconstruction elsewhere. At Wood Quay a section of the Dublin city medieval wall was also carefully numbered and removed for reconstruction - this has yet to happen, a quarter of a century later!
Equally ironic is the fact that the 1994 National Monuments (Amendment) Act was drawn up with the specific intent of preventing another Wood Quay-type scenario - and here we are again.
The true horror of the Carrickmines story is yet to be revealed, however - especially for those trusting souls who still believe that the completion of the M50 will finally alleviate their traffic problems.
Like most citizens, they have not thought to investigate Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council's development plan for the next six years.
The motorway scheme approved in 1998 provided for three interchanges within a five-kilometre stretch, running through largely rural land and ostensibly to lead to existing outlying suburban areas like Foxrock, Ballybrack, and Shankill. Apparently no one thought to ask why so many interchanges on a motorway in such an area? No one except a handful of developers, that is, including the likes of Jackson Way, who were busy buying up vast tracts of agriculturally zoned land in anticipation of the motorway.
Ten years on, with the road under construction, development proposals being considered by the county council involve the creation of a major new town at the start of the M50 and a ribbon of high density commercial and apartment development stretching along this five-kilometre section from Loughlinstown to Leopardstown, resulting in thousands of new users spilling out on to the M50 at these interchanges.
Such a plan is far removed from the original justified purpose of the M50, to allow traffic to circumnavigate the city. Instead, we shall shortly see the exploitation of this necessary national infrastructure for the facilitation of already wealthy developers resulting in the further urban sprawl.
The adjoining picture clearly demonstrates that it always was, and still is, possible to run the M50 past Carrickmines Castle while retaining this unique national monument site. Indeed, this illustration is true to the original purpose of this motorway. It was the later inclusion of the interchange at this location that requires its destruction. Result: Irish citizens now stand to lose not only their heritage, but also the free-flow and quicker journey time owed to them by the development of national infrastructure. Carrickmines Castle represents the line in the sand: to quote your editorial, enough is enough! Castle and motorway, with no intersection - why not?
Dr Mark Clinton was site director of Carrickmines Castle archaeological excavations, 2000-2002.