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Competing campaign groups have clashed over the building
of a bypass around Slane, Co Meath.
A number of fatal and other serious crashes have occurred
in Slane and on its approach roads in recent years, many of
them involving lorries that, locals claim, are diverting through
the village to avoid motorway tolls on the M1.
The Bypass
Slane Campaign has described as “alarmist and provocative”
what it described as media comments that the recently announced
preferred route of the new bypass will run 500 metres from
the buffer zone around the neolithic site of Newgrange.
The bypass campaign insisted the proposed route will pass
500 metres “from the western boundary of the outer buffer
zone of the World Heritage Site of Brú na Bóinne”.
The group also said the road was “not about economics or
shortening journey times by a matter of a few minutes - it
is about saving lives”.
A spokeswoman for the group told The Irish Times the
situation was different from the M3 motorway close to the
Hill of Tara. “The key problem with the Tara landscape was
that there were no clear lines mapping the extent of that
archaeological landscape and the expert witnesses at the oral
hearing failed to agree as to where such a line should be
drawn,” she said.
“This is clearly not the case with Brú na Bóinne. The boundaries
of the World Heritage Site have been carefully drawn as long
ago as 1989 to preserve and protect the archaeological landscape
in the core area, with an additional buffer zone to protect
the integrity of the river Boyne and the views into and out
of the core area.
“While part of the proposed bypass may be visible from points
within the World Heritage Site, it is clear that the road
lies a significant distance outside these boundaries.”
However, the Save Newgrange campaign has launched an online
petition, aimed at what it claimed is “ensuring the maximum
protection for the archaeological ensemble of the Bend of
the Boyne World Heritage Site”.
It said this was in light of the recently published “preferred
route” of the Slane bypass, which will pass within 500 metres
of the site.
The petition calls on Unesco to place the site on the List
of World Heritage Sites in Danger and to consider extending
the site’s boundary to include newly discovered archaeological
sites.
Source - The Irish Times
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