Security measures could be beefed up around the Hill of Tara after a stone monument was vandalised over the bank holiday weekend.
The Hill of Tara - known as the jewel in the crown of the Boyne Valley - is a site that has been in use for more than 5,000 years as a place of burial and assembly.
One of the stone monuments, known as the Lia Fáil, was spray-painted on Monday evening.
Chairperson of Meath County Council Councillor Nick Killian told Lunchtime Live what happened.
The Lia Fáil, which is the stone of destiny and is very much part of the Tara archaeology, was spray-painted with the word 'Fake' and completely destroyed at the weekend.
"It's been mindlessly vandalised.
"Tara is an extremely important site, it's a significant Archaeological site, and it's what we call the jewel in the Boyne Valley."
'Extremely annoyed'
Cllr Killian said Gardaí are investigating and while there is CCTV at a nearby shop, it is not on the site itself.
"It's 100 acres [and] very hard to cover," he said.
"Obviously we'll have to look at some security issues; I'm sure with new technology we might be able to pinpoint the Lia Fáil."
Meath County Council is "ironically" currently in the process of introducing a Tara conservation plan, he said.
"We're extremely annoyed that it happened, it's been reported to the Gardaí.
"It happened, I think, Monday of the bank holiday - and we're asking anybody that might have been around the Hill of Tara to come back to the Gardaí and report what they [saw].
"Monday evening towards dark".
OPW clean-up
He said the cost of the clean-up operation is unknown.
"It's a very specialist job; and we're lucky it's an OPW site," he said.
"Unfortunately, it was vandalised back in 2012, when somebody took a hammer to it.
"Then, in 2014, somebody painted it a multiple of colours.
"The OPW are very good at this sort of restoration and I've no doubt they'll do a very good job to bring it back to its pristine condition".
Cllr Killian said 188,000 people visited Tara in 2021.
"A lot of the people that use Tara are local people from the vicinity [or] from Dublin and who come every day to enjoy what they see in Tara," he said.
"People would go for dog-walking, runners; the Meath team even trained on it years ago – so it's a multiple-use site," he added.
