Your diligent diarist is having trouble figuring out just what exactly is going on at the Hill of Tara at the moment. Both the Irish Times and the Irish Independent report this morning that work on the motorway going through the Hill of Tara has been stopped due to the discovery of an important national monument in its path. To quote the Indo,The large circular enclosure, about the size of three football fields, is clearly visible and was probably used for rituals in the Iron Age or Bronze Age.
So we know that it’s big, it’s hard to miss and it’s important enough to be classified as a “national monument.”
What An Spailpín Fánach can’t figure out is, if it’s the size of three football fields, clearly visible and a national monument, an historical hat-trick of assets if there ever were any, how in the name of the dear sweet Jesus has nobody spotted it before now, before profoundly expensive heavy earth-moving equipment and even more expensive Irish civil servants turned up just to hang around for at least another year?
Three football fields. Clearly visible. And they only spotted it yesterday? How clearly visible is that?
It’s not like the Italians decided to build a Roman version of Dublin’s hideous spire on O’Connell Street in the Piazza della Rotonda and had to slink back to the office, one day after turning the first sod to say it’s no can do, they turned up at the site and can you imagine their surprise when they only spotted the bloody Pantheon right bang in the middle of the piazza. Imagine their surprise. Five thousand tons of two thousand year old granite temple, and no-spotted it ‘til the JCBs had already been hired and the contracts signed.
It’s not that something stinks about this Tara motorway business. Everything stinks. Everything. And who’s on the case to sort it out? Well, it’s only Minister for the Environment Dick Roche, the man for whom democracy is the morning and evening star, as already discussed in this space. I’ll get me bloody coat.
Technorati Tags: Ireland, politics, planning, Tara