It is said that when Feradhach Fechtnach, the king of Ireland,
died, his two sons, Tuathal and Fiachna, divided Ireland between them. The first
received its abundance and wealth, its herds and forts, the second its clifs and
estuaries, its acorn crops and fruits of the sea, its salmon and game. Learning
of this division, the nobles of christian Ireland came to see it as extremely
unjust. When Oisin asked them when of the two portions they would have chosen,
they answered, "its banquets and dwellings and all that is good in it". At which
Caoilte remarked that the portion that they had judged the worse was the one
that 'we ourselves would prefer'. Tuathal became king and Fiachna, who had
chosen the rivers, the fallow lands, the wilderness, the woods, the precipices
and estuaries, joined his fate with those of the Fianna.
I need not
inform the learned people gathered here today for it is well you all know that
the Fianna were heroes of Leinster, and indeed of Ireland, men of the trees
whose bravery rang clear as a bell across the world. But these men are not only
the stuff of legends- how great it is that they are our ancestors, and we are
their flesh and blood. these lands- and in particular the plains of royal Meath,
the kingdom of the Masterplan- were their territories, their hunting grounds,
their woodlands and their tree canopies. Here they gathered and fought, and
lived and loved.
Och, it is great a keening we should raise for our
nation, its rivers and streams smothered by a tide of corruption, this affluent
nation of ours into whose soil we have tilled our own sweat blood and tears. We
ask how can the State ask for more from its children when we give everything?
With billions of euros in the coffers how can a simple railway be so hard to put
into place? How can they have the nerve to toll us twice for entering this
desecration? To the Amendment of National Monuments Act 2004 I ask, where is our
voice in a politics where even the Constitution can be changed on a ministers
whim? What farce is 'preservation by record' when 1 500 excavation reports went
missing from official records? Mo dhaoine, we must break NRA monopoly on
archaeology here in Ireland..
Today we commend the Masterplan for
offering a perfectly viable compromise to Ireland s infrastructure problems. The
Meath Masterplan finally awards a status to our beautiful land that lately has
been denied, blocked, covered up. It stops heritage from becoming a dirty word.
In an age of information overload it is through pride in ourselves and our noble
oak roots that we stand firm, that we resist reprogramming by globalisation. So
come ye sons and daughters of the fiana, island dwellers, saints and scholars, a
long blast on the hunting horn- why should we let them erode our identity and
destroy these monuments and testaments to our glorious past? You who would not
demolish a church, how can you stand back while the graves of the Fianna are
being robbed?
Let us walk the royal grounds of Tara again as it is our
birthright to do so, the same unbroken green ground once walked by our High
Kings. Let us, through the Masterplan, think locally and act globally, build
local honour and value. We have nothing to lose but a regime. It is said that
the great only appear so great because we are on our knees, and today let us
rise.
Tara abu.
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