Tara - Irish UNESCO Tentative List due on April 15th!

national | environment | press release

Monday April 12, 2010 17:18

by Pauline Bleach - Green Ireand

pauline1 at ireland dot com

Will John Gormley keep his promise to submit it.

The Irish UNESCO tentative list including Tara is due on April the 15th 2010 or it will miss this years deadline, but so far Minister Gormley is unable to confirm it's submission.

One would have thought it a simply question. After all it is over 2 years since the Minister started the new tentative list process.

So when in January I asked via email whether the Minister was aware of the April deadline for the World Heritage Tentative list and whether the Irish list, including Tara, would be submitted in time for this year. I expected a "yes" and perhaps even a date when they expected to submit it.

However, in correspondence with Mr Gormley's secretary, I received an "envisioned", an "intention" but not a confirmation.

Now this was March and as this conversation had been going on since January I was rather surprised that by this late stage Mr Gormley had not submitted the UNESCO tentative list, rather than leaving it to the last minute.

But even then, I thought the Irish World Heritage Tentative UNESCO list was due by the 19th of April, I got it wrong.

It's actually due by the 15th of April 2010 or we miss another year.

That's now two days away.

Another year in which the Government can present the M3 motorway as a fait compli.

You can see the proposed agenda for the July meeting at

http://whc.unesco.org/uploads/events/documents/event-61...1.ppt

The cut off date is on Slide 15.

8A. Tentative Lists submitted by States Parties as of 15 April 2010.

If it misses this deadline it will not be discussed at the Brazil Meeting of the World Heritage Commitee starting the 25th July 2010.

The Tara Nomination is up on the governments World Heritage site http://www.environ.ie/en/Heritage/WorldHeritage/Ireland...eList , so all it requires now is an email to send this to UNESCO.

Now as I said Mr Gormley says he intends to submit it but so far I have asked for but not had confirmation of the date for submission.

There is nothing on the Environment site to say it has been submitted but given that it is now three days away from submission, do you think that we could get confirmation that the Minister is a man of his word and that list will go in for this year?