Environment Minister John Gormley is to review how Ireland protects its heritage sites.

Thank Christ. As the ireland.com article illustrates, several sites that should have been national monuments have been destroyed in recent times.

We’re about to lose another one due to Dick Roche’s parting shot (he was demoted back to Junior Minister for Europe). Sadly, Gormley says he does not have the power to overturn his predecessor’s decision to allow a motorway be built on the site of a monument thousands of years old.

I can only hope his National Landscape Strategy will be one that can be put into practice rather than some political drivel. There’s nothing more infuriating for me than people being seen to do something while in reality they’re not doing a goddam thing.

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