The small band of protesters who blocked the gates of the M3 construction compound to prevent earth-moving machinery exiting the site to start work on this highly controversial motorway may well be doing the State some service, to paraphrase William Shakespeare, in holding up road-making activity until after the general election.
Depending on its result, politicians negotiating to form a new government may agree to re-examine the advisability of routeing a motorway through the most sensitive and important archaeological landscape in Ireland.
Seven years have passed since the National Roads Authority (NRA) was advised by archaeologist Margaret Gowen that the monuments around Tara "cannot be viewed in isolation, or as individual sites, but must be seen in the context of an intact archaeological landscape, which should not under any circumstances be disturbed, in terms of visual or direct impact on the monuments themselves".
This was also the view of leading academic experts on Tara - Dr Edel Bhreathnach, Joe Fenwick and Conor Newman - and a host of scholars worldwide, including the director of the National Museum of Ireland, Dr Pat Wallace. Despite this, and the inherent dangers involved in proceeding with the route as planned, An Bord Pleanála gave its approval in August 2003.
The recent discovery of a large prehistoric henge at Lismullen, and its designation as a national monument, has given further weight to the case made by opponents that the NRA, in pursuing the existing alignment, would be "tip-toeing through monuments and moving whack into them", as Conor Newman once put it. That is exactly what has happened in the case of Lismullen, which was hitherto undetected.
Other archaeological sites along the route - such as the souterrains at Roestown or the circular enclosure at Barronstown - might equally have merited national monument status. But thanks to amending legislation brought in by the present Government in the wake of the Carrickmines Castle debacle, this was left to the NRA's own archaeologists to decide without reference to any other body.
In his very fine speech at Westminster a week ago today, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern referred to the extraordinary pace of change in Ireland, and said: "We have seized our opportunities and honoured our heritage". He also quoted Daniel O'Connell: "There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong". We are not honouring our heritage by running a motorway through Tara's landscape; the alignment of this stretch of the M3 is morally wrong and cannot be regarded as politically right. An alternative route should be found.