My findings on Tara were altered, says archaeologist
Irish Mail on Sunday - 29 June 2008 - By Luke Byrne
A LEADING archaeologist employed to survey the M3 Tara Valley route has claimed her findings were changed to support the motorway when in fact there was evidence against it. In a devastating attack, Jo Ronayne - who was working for the National Roads Authority - says her findings were altered before being presented to ministers. Miss Ronayne, who was an excavation director at the Tara valley site in Co. Meath, claims she was told to 'change interpretations' so as to 'lessen to potential of numbers of sites'. And she says she was excluded from NRA meetings in which her evidence was altered before reports were passed on to the Government.
The damning allegations will shatter the Governments defence that it would not change the Tara route because there is no significant archaeological site on it. And it will lead to disturbing questions about whether ministers - and in turn the public or even the courts - were misled about the archaeological finds.Miss Ronayne, who was directly employed by NRA subcontractor Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd, suggests in an explosive academic article that her role appeared to have been a sham. 'I didn't realise that the testing and my reports would be used to facilitate rather than stop the project going ahead. Or that they don't let you write the truth in the reports or give you enough time to do a proper job,' she wrote.
Read the full story, and a press release from TaraWatch
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