Selling Ireland By The Pound

lending Wood is a mixed forest hill in Blessington, Co. Wicklow. It is home to a wide range of animals, birds and plants ? including deer, wild goats, red squirrels and several increasingly rare bird-of-prey species. But what makes Glending truly remarkable is its heritage.Stretching back 3,000 years, Glending?s long history of human habitation is etched into the very soil. Yet this beautiful reminder of our wild Irish nature, archaeology and ancestral past is threatened with imminent destruction; indeed, it has already been partially and irreparably destroyed.
So goes the argument of those currently fighting to preserve the area in its original condition. In 1992, however, Glending was sold by the Department of Energy to Roadstone Dublin Ltd, a subsidiary quarrying company of Cement Roadstone Holdings. The circumstances of that sale have lately become the subject of considerable controversy, with politicians, academics, lawyers, locals and other commentators demanding that the issue should be included in the terms of reference of the new Payments to Politicians Tribunal. Yet conflicting interpretations of the facts, from the various parties involved, make the waters muddier almost by the day.
?Roadstone already owned 500 acres in the Blessington area, so when the rumour went round in 1991 that they had bought the rest of Glending, we were very concerned, because we knew they would not be growing carrots on it,? says Frank Corcoran, an environmental lawyer, lecturer and chairman of the Blessington Heritage Trust.
?Glending is very important for a number of reasons. From an archaeological point of view, it?s a 3,000 year old Bronze Age site. Because of its strategic position and its elevation over the Midlands, it was chosen by the Bronze Age settlers in Blessington at about 1,000 BC to be their settlement site. They built a ring fort adjacent to Glending, on one hill of it, which is now in the ownership of the OPW, but the other part of it is even more important.
?From the ring fort you had no view of the Midlands ? it?s blinded by a hill on the opposite side of the road ? whereas from the area of Glending which was subsequently sold to Roadstone, you do have a view 50 miles into what was Celtic Leinster, right as far as present-day Portarlington, and it was for that strategic reason that it was chosen as a site for the Bronze Age settlers about 1,000 BC.?
Two thousand years later, this area was settled by the ruling Viking family of Dublin, the Mac Torcaills, who were again drawn to the site because the hill looked down upon one of the most important junctions in Ireland at the time ? the crossroads of the main routes running east-west and north-south. The view from Glending was the vital factor; thus the archaeological relevance of the area rests in the hill?s elevation, as well as the potential remains that lie hidden in the earth. According to Roadstone?s critics, both the earth and the elevation will be removed if the quarrying goes ahead.
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In the recent Dail debate on the terms of reference for a new payments to politicians tribunal, Labour Party leader Dick Spring, Green Party TD John Gormley, and Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins submitted amendments to the government?s terms of reference, proposing that the sale and re-zoning of Glending be included in the tribunal enquiry. Many other TDs, including former Minister for the Environment Brendan Howlin, Emmet Stagg, Tommy Boughan and Pat Upton, supported the move. On 11th of September, the inclusion of the sale of Glending to Roadstone was voted down by 76 to 66 votes in the Dail; those voting against its inclusion mainly comprised Fianna Fail and Progressive Democrat TDs. The Dail debate is not the end of the matter though; in the public domain, the controversy rages on.
There is disagreement about the real value of the Glending land, purchased by Roadstone for #1.25 million. This has been given new impetus by a statement issued by Framus Ltd., a quarrying company, who also work land in the Blessington area. Commercial rivals of Roadstone, Framus made the extraordinary claim that the firm paid the State 2 pence per tonne for raw material that was worth #2 or more per tonne ? and put the real value of the land at between #38 million and #57.6 million. ?The enormity of this discrepancy,? the Framus statement continues, ?is a scandal.?
These figures are accepted by Frank Corcoran, who also argues that the site was grossly undervalued by the Dept. of Energy at the time of the sale. However, this claim is firmly rejected by Roadstone.
?Sites with a similar grading of sand and gravel deposits as that purchased by Roadstone in 1992 have been acquired throughout Ireland over the past eight years,? a spokesperson told Hot Press. ?The Group has paid a range of prices from #2,000 per acre to c.#8,000 per acre for these sites depending on market conditions. The price paid for the 147 acres at Blessington exceeds the upper end of this scale.?
Whatever about the issue of the price paid by Roadstone for the Glending lands, the unusual method of sale has also given rise to criticism. In 1990, Kieran O?Malley and Co., a firm of independent consultants, advised the State that the sale of Glending should be by public tender. They subsequently reversed that view, advising that the sale should be to Roadstone alone. ?The result,? says Corcoran, ?was that the land was then sold not by public tender, not even by auction, not even by private treaty having advertised it for sale. In effect, it was sold secretly to Roadstone.?
The manner of the sale of what had been a State asset to a private company was contentious enough for Liam Kavanagh TD (one of the Wicklow county councillors to demand an investigation into Glending, among other Wicklow planning issues) to raise a Parliamentary Question about it in the Dail, in April of this year.
In his reply the Minister Ivan Yates said: ?In April 1990, the independent consultants [O?Malley and Co.] suggested that the Department of Energy might be best advised to invite offers by tender for the sale of the land. However . . . the consultants subsequently advised in October 1990 that it would be most unlikely that any other party would be able to match an offer from that company [Roadstone] and strongly recommended that the sale to that company be pursued.?
What were O?Malley & Co.?s reasons for advising that Glending be offered to Roadstone alone? Kieran O?Malley was unavailable to answer questions from Hot Press, but in a previous response to the media about the issue he stated that his advice to the Department of Energy regarding the Glending land was based on the view that if the Department applied for planning permission to quarry the land ? which, he said, would enhance its value ? and subsequently had the application turned down, the land?s potential value would be undermined. O?Malley?s advice was that there was significant risk of planning refusal.
Planning issues of this kind are intrinsically complicated and come down to fine judgements on the part of the specialists involved. In this case, O?Malley believed that a planning application to quarry would fail, because the Department had no practicable access to the Glending land. Also heavy duty haulage would be required to transport sand and gravel from Glending to Dublin and the disruption to Blessington village, with trucks passing through, would be such that permission would almost certainly be refused. O?Malley also advised that the only acceptable method of accessing Glending would be via Roadstone?s existing sand and gravel operation, which was adjacent to the land in question. Roadstone had direct access to the N81, the main road in the area, on the Dublin side of Blessington. Thus he advised that Glending be offered to Roadstone.
John Barret and Associates were also employed by the Department of Energy to evaluate the sand and gravel deposits in Glending. The advice of both Barnett and O?Malley had a direct influence on the purchase price of Glending. But questions have been raised over these companies? suitability to act as independent advisors on the sale of the land, with Roadstone acknowledging that both Barnett and O?Malley acted as consultants to Roadstone themselves, both prior and subsequent to the sale in early 1992.
The recent Framus statement claims that O?Malley & Co. neglected to include important information in their advice ? information which would have had a direct bearing on how Glending should have been sold. ?The justification by the Department for the refusal to advertise or offer the site to the public was a report by Kieran O?Malley stating that the only company which could purchase the site was Roadstone. This was factually incorrect. This error is inexplicable in view of the existence of at least three other companies, Carnegie, National Concrete and Hudson, all of which operated existing sand and gravel operations out of the same reserve and which could have obtained access to the Glending site. It has subsequently emerged that another company, Johnston, actually made an offer. Mr O?Malley?s failure to be aware of these companies? potential interest as purchasers is inexplicable.?
However, Roadstone insist that the method of sale was entirely above board, and that no secret deals of any kind were entered into. For his part, O?Malley has said that he would be very surprised if the Department of Energy weren?t fully aware, before they employed him, that he had acted as a consultant to Roadstone in the past. But the questions still remain: Who made the decision to appoint these consultants? And did the State require any statement of interest from O?Malley and Barnett, whose roles should have been completely objective and independent?
There are other aspects to the sale which have provoked questions from critics of the Department of Energy.
?The government of which Charles Haughey was Taoiseach gave preferential treatment to the company of which Des Traynor was chairman at the time,? Frank Corcoran says. ?Des Traynor was in fact a founding Director of CRH in 1970. I believe that the Haughey/Traynor connection should be investigated in this context, especially as CRH have admitted this year, in response to a question from one of the shareholders, that they gave #45,000 to political parties, including Fianna Fail, last year, and in the previous ten years they gave an average of #10,000 per annum.?
Roadstone have rejected outright that the connection is of any significance. ?As a non-executive Chairman, Mr. Traynor had no role in identifying or negotiating and Group purchases,? a spokesperson commented.
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In 1993, many Blessington locals were dismayed to see Roadstone bulldozers move in and start quarrying the Glending lands which the company had acquired in 1992. In an Irish Times article dated 23/8/97, Councillor Tommy Cullen stated that Roadstone began quarrying in Glending between November 1992 and February 1993 without planning permission.
?They removed 67,000 tonnes of sand and gravel without planning permission,? echoes Blessington Heritage Trust Chairman Frank Corcoran. ?Over 2,000 people wrote to Wicklow Co. Council beseeching them to take proceedings to stop it, and Wicklow Co. Council?s offices were picketed at the time.?
This is not disputed by Roadstone. However, the company has stated that at no time did they act illegally. ?Extraction was undertaken on the understanding that planning permission was not required due to the existing works on the land,? a spokesperson told Hot Press. ?Once it was determined that planning permission may be required, Roadstone voluntarily gave an undertaking to cease extraction on the land. The company did not knowingly or willingly undertake illegal quarrying on this site.?
What actually happened was this.
In March 1994 Wicklow Co. Council, with the backing of the Naas/Blessington community, initiated High Court proceedings against Roadstone to halt further quarrying at Glending. It was in this context that Roadstone gave the first undertaking to the court that they would suspend operations in Glending, pending the outcome of the case. They subsequently applied to have the undertaking lifted in July 1994, but the court refused.
Throughout the legal proceedings, many Blessington locals had given enthusiastic support on the ground, and hard evidence to the courts, to boost Wicklow county council?s case against Roadstone. There was considerable surprise, then, when on December 4th 1995, the county council decided to discontinue the proceedings. Apparently without prior warning, their representatives stood up in court and said they had no intention of proceeding with the case against Roadstone. At this point the Blessington Heritage Trust stepped in. The judge allowed the Trust to continue the proceedings, and to take advantage of the very expensive evidence already given.
?The county council was actually winning the case hands down,? adds Frank Corcoran, ?and it was inexplicable to us why they would not proceed with it. They tried to knock us out of the proceedings over the next few months, along with Roadstone, but were not successful. Eventually, in March of 1996, the county council was going to accept an undertaking from Roadstone not to do any further quarrying in the two acres they?d already quarried illegally, but that two acres was already destroyed and such an undertaking would have been a nonsense. We insisted that the undertaking should cover the entire 147 acres that Roadstone bought, and Roadstone then agreed to that undertaking, and to pay our costs as well. So in other words, the Heritage Trust won the case for the county council, because they had no intention of proceeding with it.?
On the basis of this undertaking, Roadstone were obliged not to carry out further quarrying into Glending until they?d gone through the full planning process. They also gave an undertaking that if planning permission was refused, they would reinstate that area where they had already removed 67,000 tonnes.
Meanwhile, further curious details were about to be revealed. Up till now, Glending was officially an ?Amenity/Forestry Zone?. However, in the spring of 1996, county manager Blaise Tracey asked Tommy Cullen, the chairman of Wicklow county council at the time, to preside over a meeting of the council. The main item on the agenda was the ?re-zoning? of the Glending area from its status as Amenity/Forest to Quarrying ? a move which would arguably make the way much easier for anyone seeking permission to quarry there.
Compelled by a number of apparent discrepancies in the county council?s report on the proposed land re-zoning, Tommy Cullen asked to see the relevant files. However, county manager Blaise Tracey refused to hand them over and Cullen had to seek an injunction in the High Court to stop the re-zoning meeting from going ahead. Eventually Justice McCracken delivered a judgement that Cullen should be given access to the files, in the company of solicitors for Wicklow County Council.
When Cullen finally examined the files, he discovered a letter dating from December 1994 (nearly 18 months previously, and a whole year before the county council had said publicly that they were dropping the case), which showed that the council had reached a private agreement with Roadstone to withdraw its High Court proceedings against the company until the completion of a development plan for Blessington. It was this development plan which contained the controversial re-zoning proposals. Yet all along, according to several sources, Blaise Tracey had told the county councillors, and through them the general public, that Wicklow county council was proceeding with the Roadstone case to the limit of their resources, giving no hint that any agreement had been reached with Roadstone. (Wicklow County Council declined to comment when this assertion was put to them by Hot Press.)
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Undaunted by opposition to their plans, Roadstone submitted a proposal to the Blessington Development Plan that 80 acres of the Amenity/Forestry lands of Glending should be re-zoned to ?Future Quarrying?. There were six submissions against the re-zoning, but it was still put forward as a proposal by Wicklow County Council in the development plan.
The County Council were set to vote on the re-zoning of Glending on 3rd July 1995, and the wheels of local protest spun into action right away.
?In a matter of three days,? Frank Corcoran says, ?we got a petition of 700 people in the town itself to our local councillor Jim Ruttell, asking him to point out to the councillors that there?s plenty of support for the Amenity Zone, because we didn?t want it to go by default.
?However Jim Ruttell, to our surprise, refused to present the petition, and then we realised that he was going to push the motion himself. So the councillors voted, back on the 3rd of July 1995, to re-zone Glending Woods without even knowing that there was a petition of 700 people opposed to such a re-zoning.?
Jim Ruttell confirmed that he?d been presented with this petition and had turned it down. ?I?ve found in public life that you have to be sceptical of a lot of petitions,? he pointed out. ?Also, there were a lot of people from outside of Blessington on that petition, who would not be constituents of mine at all.?
The Council?s proposal to re-zone Glending to Quarrying status went on display for the statutory month, and in that time 1,415 objections were lodged, with only one submission not opposing. Also, a huge Blessington Heritage Festival was organised in August of that year, with Anuna, dancers from Riverdance, Kevin Conniff of the Chieftains, Cruachan, Prayer Boat, Ed Huck and An Dal Cuinn Clan among the many artists lending their support to the campaign to save Glending. Despite all this, when the statutory period was up, Wicklow County Councillors voted by 15 votes to seven to re-zone Glending.
Roadstone subsequently applied for planning permission to quarry. The council wrote back to them stating that part of their existing operations around Blessington were unauthorised, and that they would have to apply for retention of this illegal quarrying, which consists of about 24 acres of settling ponds 60 feet high. Roadstone who went ahead in August of this year seeking retention of these unauthorised works have pointed out that much of the unauthorised works had been carried out by previous owners of Glending, including the State itself).
The Blessington Heritage Trust have now taken legal proceedings against the Wicklow County Council and the Dept. of the Environment concerning what they claim are irregularities in the adoption of the Blessington Development Plan, that document which approved the re-zoning of Glending to Quarrying status. Evidence was given in June of this year, and judgement was reserved by Ms Justice McGuinness until the 4th of October.
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Another government department deeply implicated in the Glending controversy is the Office of Public Works (OPW). Though its role has since been redefined, one of the main tasks of the OPW until the mid-90s was to study, list, protect and promote our national heritage and archaeological remains.
On the 147 acres sold to Roadstone by the State in 1992, there was an archaeological site, listed on the OPW?s ?Sites and Monuments Records? (the ?SMR? ? a catalogue of state-protected archaeological sites) as SMR11.
The site listed as SMR11 ? a marshy wetland yet to be excavated ? is a possible Bronze Age gold deposition lake. Such lakes often existed in proximity to ring forts; there are other examples at Moogaun in Galway and at Armagh ring fort. Where a natural lake did not exist the Celts would often create one, into which they would ceremoniously throw gold or bronze, to demonstrate that, in comparison to their respect for the gods, their worldly possessions meant nothing to them.
Despite its potential archaeological importance, there is evidence to suggest that SMR11 was de-listed by the OPW prior to the sale Glending in 1992. Later, when the Wicklow county council proposed to re-zone Glending from its then use as Amenity to Quarrying, the OPW stated that a number of archaeological sites had been de-listed, and that SMR11 could be removed from their records because it is not an archaeological site.
However, in May 1997 the OPW told The Irish Times that SMR11 was de-listed after, and not before, the sale of Glending. Also in 1997, the OPW contradicted earlier statements by saying that before it is quarried away, SMR11 should be inspected because of the archaeological potential of wetlands.
Hot Press spoke to OPW?s head archaeologist David Sweetman. I asked if the archaeological site SMR11 had been taken from the National Sites and Monuments Records.
?No, it?s not de-listed. It wasn?t ever de-listed off our records,? he responded. ?This idea of a grand plot is nonsense. We don?t get involved in politics ? we?re above that sort of thing.?
I said that I?d seen an OPW letter which stated: ?The archaeological site . . . (SMR Site11) may be removed, as it has been confirmed since the production of the Sites and Monuments Record that this particular site is not an archaeological site.?
Sweetman puts this down to a clerical error; he says that it had been suggested but never confirmed that SMR11 should come off the records, and that the person who wrote this letter actually made a mistake. If this is the case, then it is a very official-looking mistake, with very important consequences, because the document in question is actually the OPW?s official submission to the Blessington Development Plan, i.e. it is the OPW?s advice on the archaeological impact of re-zoning Glending from Amenity to Quarrying.
Reflecting the importance of this document, Wicklow County Council told Hot Press that in proposing to re-zone Glending, ?the question of the archaeological importance of the site was dealt with . . . having regard to the correspondence received form the Office of Public Works.? They also supplied the relevant section of an official report given to the county councillors which was to help them to decide which way to vote on the re-zoning issue. It states that the only archaeological feature at Glending is Rath Turtle moat (which is preserved on lands owned by the OPW). There is no mention SMR11, the possible Bronze Age deposition lake on Roadstone?s land.
The National Monuments Service (who have assumed the OPW?s archaeological role) are now saying that Roadstone should employ an official archaeologist to inspect the development site.
In light of this contradictory evidence, these questions must be asked: What explanation do the National Monuments Section have for their conflicting statements about this wetlands area (SMR11)? When exactly was it de-listed, if it was? On whose instructions? Did the de-listing facilitate the state?s sale of Glending to a quarrying company? Did it influence Wicklow county council?s decision to re-zone Glending from Amenity to Quarrying?
Frank Corcoran claims that he has been told that the National Monuments Service?s latest position is that the site known as SMR11 on Roadstone?s land in Glending was never de-listed at all. ?It has miraculously reappeared on the computer records,? says Corcoran.
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Behind the Glending controversy lies what is perhaps the most fundamental issue of all. Since the end of the 1950s, when people began to lose their respect for Ireland?s heritage sites and their antiquity, our archaeological legacy has been consistently depleted. This damaging process is speeding up all the time. ?If it goes on,? says Frank Corcoran of the Blessington Heritage Trust, ?we?ll end up with no archaeological sites.?
Ireland is famous for its archaeology ? it is one of the main reasons why so many cultural tourists visit our shores. Our archaeological heritage is a priceless national resource, telling us who we are and where we have come from. Will we sacrifice the living links to our ancestral past for the sake of private profit? Our archaeological heritage is irreplaceable, and ? whatever about rights and wrongs of the Glending controversy ? it belongs to all the Irish people. In this bizarre saga, this is one thing we can say for certain. n