Pic: Dissonancefalling

The Irish Times reports that a new project to protect the landscape and improve planning decisions nationally is to be piloted in the Tara Skryne valley, Co Meath (Ireland). The project, which will be carried out by the Heritage Council in conjunction with Meath County Council, will develop a landscape management plan and designate a landscape conservation area. Initial funding of €25,000 is being provided by the Heritage Council and the local authority. Further funding is expected from the Department of the Environment next year. The end cost is expected to be about €125,000.

The project will begin in the autumn and is expected to be completed in 18 to 24 months. It will examine current and potential land use and develop a plan for the area. The project will have community input and will be led by the county council. Heritage Council chief executive Michael Starrett described the project as an important step towards the realisation of a national landscape strategy.

Landscape management is about accommodating change and development. It provides a much more holistic approach than the current model, to planning how we manage and develop the landscape where we live.

He said the project was about finding a successful model that could be applied to special landscapes across the State and another pilot was planned for the Burren, details of which will be announced later in the year.
Separate studies published last year by the Heritage Council and Fáilte Ireland concluded there was an urgent need for clear guidelines on land use. The studies also found that Ireland was the only country in western Europe that had not specifically legislated for managing landscape on a national level. Mr Starrett said:

With or without the new motorway, the Tara Skryne landscape is very special and it deserves special attention to ensure that future decisions and changes are made using the best tools available.

PRESS RELEASE - TARAWATCH.org -Monday, 28 July 2008

While TaraWatch welcomes the efforts of the Heritage Council, to create a Tara Skryne Landscape Managment Plan, we deeply regret that the Department of the Environment and Meath County Council have waited six years before adopting their recommendations. As such, the plan is a mere token gesture towards preservation, and balanced development.

Michael Starrett, Chairman of the Heritage Council is right to note in the official press release that

The Heritage Council has been actively promoting the introduction of Landscape Management Plans for many years.

The Heritage Council recommended in 2002 that a national programme of Landscape Characterisation be undertaken. Draft guidelines prepared by the Department of Environment on landscape characterisation, which would have prevented this entire controversy, have been in circulation since 2000, and are only now being implemented.

The essentials of this Tara Management Plan were urged by Chairman of the Heritage Council, Michael Starrett, at the Oireachtas Environment Committee in 2004, long before the public-private partnership contract for the M3 was signed, and the decision to build the M3 in the middle of the landscape could have been easily altered. In his presentation he stated:

It is obvious that during the road design process consideration was given to Tara and cultural heritage. However, given the international significance of Tara it is a matter of debate if sufficient weighting was placed upon heritage in the matrix of criteria used to inform the decision making process. Survey work in 2004 undertaken by Landsdowne Market Research, on behalf of the Heritage Council, has identified a distinct shift in public attitude towards increased heritage protection and the levels of awareness of its importance to all income groups and nationwide. The survey can be benchmarked against a similar survey carried out in 1999. This is a shift in public attitudes we may all do well to heed and it may well be asked if we are handing Tara on to future generations in a better condition than we inherited it.

Furthermore, many of the self-same protections were already written into the two previous Meath County Development Plans, and never enforced by Meath County Council.

In light of the fact that planning decisions, which will impact national monuments such as Tara, are still being left to local authorities, we reject the plan as representing the fulfilment of the duties of the Minister for the Environmnet, Heritage and Local Government to protect the national heritage.

TaraWatch calls on the Minister for the Environment, to immediately review all options which would provide for a re-routing of the M3 and place a set of statutory-based protections, found in the National Monuments Acts, on the Tara Landscape.

Vincent Salafia of TaraWatch said:

These limited protections only confirm the fact that the M3 should never have been built in this landscape in the first place. It’s like using a band-aid to fix a broken nose.

The Heritage Council proposed landscape protection measures six years ago in 2002, before the M3 was approved in 2003 and they were ignored until now.

The M3 toll road should be re-routed or scrapped, and the Tara section should become a heritage trail, which would be much more profitable and give some real protections to the most important landscape in Ireland.

Contact - Laura Grealish 087-972-8603 / Vincent Salafia 087-132-3365 info@tarawatch.org

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