It seems even after three years without an elected government the A6 road scheme remains beyond objective scrutiny

Both matters, scheduled for 26 March, related to the upgrade of the A6.

Why not use Zoom?

It seems even after three years without an elected government the A6 remains beyond objective scrutiny.

Of course, these are extraordinary times, however, this virus is not the only crisis in town.

Scientists have long been warning that the climate and ecological breakdown threatens not millions of people globally, but potentially billions.

The United Nations urges the world’s leaders to protect what remains of the planet’s wetlands, forests and peatland – natural habitats supporting humans and wildlife alike.

They also harbour the best opportunities we have of halving our carbon emissions by 2050, already the most optimistic forecast experts give before all realistic hope is lost of preventing the current multiple annual droughts, fires, floods and storms becoming terminal.

Irrespective of the need to upgrade dangerous or congested roads why does the Department for Infrastructure, in defiance of all the science, persist in building a short section of the A6 in an internationally important wetland protected in law, through a designated floodplain, vital farmland, native woodland and saturated peatland, that just happens to be the homeplace of Ireland’s greatest contemporary poet, to boot?

And all without the legitimacy and transparency of the Competent Authority’s Habitats Directive Appropriate Assessment.

This scheme is costing the earth, quite literally, yet I suspect it is being swept under the carpet like so many other open secrets.

Chris Murphy, Killough, Co Down