Interview of Vincent Salafia: Carrickmines Castle Campaign to Hill of Tara Campaign

In the prior blog post, Vincent Salafia had recounted how he came to live in Ireland. He had just got to the point of telling how he became involved with those trying to preserve the Carrickmine Castle and that he and his supporters won a Supreme Court injunction which held up further construction of the road.

Question: I know the injunction didn’t hold in the long run. What happened?

     That injunction lasted for about a year. Those trying to continue building the road came along with a different legal assault and won a second injunction. Then the government changed the whole national monuments act which included a special provision to put the motorway through the Carrickmines Castle site. A third Supreme Court case was taken, arguing that provision in the act was unconstitutional. There is a constitutional responsibility on the part of government to protect heritage.  In fact, it was established that there was such a constitutional imperative for the first time in Irish history and in fact for the first time in world history that this constitutional imperative did exist. It was said the constitutional imperative did not apply in this particular instance for some technical reason.

     Just around the time that was all coming to a head, we had been hearing about this proposal to build a similar motorway up on the Hill of Tara. I had gotten involved in a couple of disputes with this organization known as An Taisce. Generally a good organization, but the person in charge, him and I had some disputes. They wanted to take over all the legal action and I held it should be carried out by the group that had put the case together.

     To cut a long story short, I said I’m going to head up to Tara, and start up a campaign there. You guys can finish off Carrickmines.

     I went up to Tara in 2003. There had been various local groups who had been participating in the public process where an environmental impact assessment was done.  There was the Meath Archaeological Historical Society, the Meath Road Action Group, various local resident groups. We started having meetings. The Columban Fathers have a big training institution there, right in view of the Hill of Tara. We started having meetings there in the big old buildings. I used to travel up every week at these meetings.

     The residents were reluctant to take a law suit. After about a year of putting on different events and not being able to persuade the politicians to change their mind, I left the group then and went on my own to the High Court to seek an injunction to stop them from doing the test trenching for the motorway.  The judicial review was of the ministers’ decision to grant permission for the test trenching. The archaeological experts had already discovered a huge number of archaeological sites along the pathway of the motorway and a lot of different archaeologists and historians had protested, saying a lot of these sites should be left in situ, rather than being excavated and being preserved by record.

     What happened then, ironically was my case got held up while they awaited the Supreme Court judgment on Carrickmines case determining the constitutionality of the  National Monuments Act. It became a long drawn out process. This went on for years really. In approximately 2004/2005 I went to court. It was 2007 before the case came before full hearing. I lost in the High Court. A really nasty decision, it was. I really got abused by the judge and it was really disheartening because he was clearly quite biased against stopping the motorway proposal.

     My appeal was trending toward the Supreme Court, when An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland, came along. My case had really gotten messed up. The judge had tied it up so tightly in knots, I think it was impossible to win in the Supreme Court. At that point, it was an effort to hold them off as long as possible until something else happened. An Taisce came along and said they’d take the case forward if I agreed to drop mine. I did so, however this gave the authorities the opportunity to sign the contract with the construction company. An Taisce waited too long to go into court so there was a window there for the authorities to get the contract signed and get work underway. There was no injunction in place.  When An Taisce did get into court, they were run out within a day or two and that legal process was all over.

     There were movements in Europe to stop aspects of the construction.   When they started excavating for the road, this new site called Lismullin popped up. It was a previously undetected, unrecorded site which was a huge wooden henge (A henge is a group of standing columns found to be arranged according to the local astronomical events. Stone Henge in England is probably one of the most famous henge). We had experts fly in from the US. Dr. Ron Hicks from Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, was our main protagonist. He helped us do a petition to the world monument fund to place Lismullin on the hundred most endangered sites in the world. We were successful in that and Archaeological magazine came along and said Lismullin was one of the top ten archaeological discoveries in the year 2007.


Next Post: Vincent Salafia: Hill of Tara to Brú na Bóinne

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The Connections of Egypt with Ireland

The whole world is watching the Egyptians these last few days, as they have insisted on the departure of their despotic ruler - Hosni Mubarak.

So far, the military seems to be the only broad based force for keeping order, but we haven't seen anyone in the military with an urge to appoint permanent military rule. The military, along with the vast majority of Egyptians seem to be oriented around transitioning to democratic rule.

I started looking for connections between Ireland and Egypt, and was surprised at the connections.

Scota

Reports say, back in the 1950s, Dr. Sean O'Riordan of Trinity College found faience beads buried at the Mound of the Hostages at the Hill of Tara with skeletal remains. These beads were made from a paste of minerals and plant extracts that had been fired. This was an early way to make glass-like beads. The combination of materials made a self-forming vitreous coating. The faience beads at the Hill of Tara resembled Egyptian faience beads in manufacture and design. Reportedly, the skeleton was carbon dated to approximately 1350 BC. These beads at this location in association with a skeleton that old were latched onto by those who knew the oral history of Scota, a daughter of a pharaoh, who is thought to have settled in Ireland, perhaps by way of Scotland. The fact that faience beads have been found across Europe and the Mediterranean should throw some cold water on the theory, especially given the power of economic trade to spread small beautiful items or the technology to make such items. Still, the fact the same type of beads have been found in Scotland could be cited as support for the Egyptian connection to the misty isles.

Coptic Christian Missionaries

The Coptic Christians which originated in Egypt appear to have established some of the first monasteries and had an influence upon the development and spread of monastic life. The Coptic monks got at least as far as the Island of Lerins off the coast of Gaul. Some think Coptic monks were in Ireland even before Saint Patrick (Naomh Pádraig). Others think Saint Patrick actually spent time with Coptic monks at Lerins after escaping from slavery in Ireland and before he went back to proselytize back in Ireland.

What Follows Revolution

The Egyptians of today and the Irish of early in the last century have another thing in common – revolution.

The government and others in Ireland enjoy talking about the pre-Revolution, the 1916 Easter Rising. The great Irish patriots Patrick Pearse, leading the Irish Volunteers, and James Connolly, leading the smaller Irish Citizen Army, along with 200 members of Cumann na mBan, seized the Post Office and key locations in Dublin and proclaimed the Irish Republic independent of Britain. They lost rather quickly, but they inspired the Irish War of Independence which began with a declaration of independence in January 1919. Both sides agreed to a truce in July 1921 and the Anglo-Irish Treaty formally broke off most of Ireland from Britain.

The Republic of Ireland government likes talking about the Easter Rising and celebrating the War of Independence, but they are strangely silent about what came next.

With the Anglo-Irish Treaty accomplished, a civil war broke out between two groups of Irish nationalists: the Provisional Government and the Republican opposition. The Provisional Government forces supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty, while the Republican opposition thought the Treaty compromised the Irish Republic. The Free State forces won, but the Civil War was bloodier than the War of Independence. Two political parties in the Republic of Ireland: Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are descended from the opposing sides in the Civil War. The bad feelings in Irish society from the Civil War persisted for decades.

So, the Irish example shows while Independence is something to be striven for, the aftermath is just as important as the struggle.

I hope and pray justice, fairness, and peace can reign in the conversion of Egypt to a democratic state.

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Post Script: I heard on the Academic Minute, carried on WAMC Public Radio, the modern day Coptic Christians, whose ancestors I spoke about above, were important in the recent uprising in Egypt. Dr. Dyron Daughrity, Pepperdine University said, "The New Year's Day church bombing this year killed 21 people and sent large numbers of Coptic Christians to the streets in protest."

Dr. Dyron Daughrity maintains the Coptic cry for justice was part of the perfect storm which led to the ouster of Mubarak. Find out more by clicking here.


For something lighter, why not check out my post of an interview with the sean nós singer: Brían Ó hAirt.