Landfill hearing reopens on concern that site is prehistoric 'sacred place'
AN BORD Pleanála yesterday reopened a two-year-old oral hearing into proposals for a major regional landfill on a 600-acre site at Nevitt in north Co Dublin.
Addressing the hearing yesterday, Dr Warner said too little attention had been paid by the EIA to the relevance of the place name, which he said was derived from the old Irish "Nemed" which "can only mean sacred place". This was the only place in Ireland with this name, which could only mean a place of great importance, he said.

Dr Warner said the overwhelming implication was a built or dug structure and was likely to have been a substantial built shrine, a collection of small sacred sites "or a very large ditched enclosure of the Tara/Navan kind".

The area's potential had been reported by Dr Conor Newman of NUI Galway, who found the area rich in Roman-British artefacts.

Dr Warner questioned the adequacy of the assessment's methodology, which used a "magnetometer" to detect archaeology. He argued the magnetometer was used on 15 per cent of the site.
God save Ireland!