Believe me, Runemage, lots of people have said it was 500 metres from Newgrange! RTE erroneously reported it as such when the route was announced, and Vincent Salafia has been linking that report ever since, despite knowing full well that it's misleading. Any post which was posted to the Save Newgrange site clarifying that the proposed bypass would be 500 metres from the buffer zone around Bru na Boinne, rather than 500 metres from Newgrange, was deleted and the poster barred.
My understanding is that it is over 500 metres from the boundary of the buffer zone around Bru na Boinne.
The problem is that Slane desperately needs a bypass. I think most reasonable people agree on that. The difficulty is where to build it. This route was selected, after much investigation, as the one which was the least intrusive on heritage sites. 44 sites were found within 500 metres of the road. (This is a figure often quoted by Save Newgrange). However, what is less publicised is that of the 44 sites, all of them are outside the buffer zone, 34 sites will not be impacted at all, two will be impacted indirectly and 8 will be impacted directly. Of those 8, after mitigation some will actually be impacted positively (like the Old Slane-Dublin road),
The only site (and I grant you it's the major one) which will have any negative impact after mitigation is Bru na Boinne itself, and that is regarded as only an indirect visual impact which can be minimised by landscape planting.
The western route which is being championed by Save Newgrange would pass much closer to actual areas of heritage importance (a lot of the 44 sites are "possible" areas, which still doesn't change the fact that they will not be impacted upon). It seems heritage only counts when it suits an agenda. The western route will affect Slane Castle, Ladyswell, St. Erc's Hermitage, Dollardstown House, Stackallen House, etc. It would also be a much longer route which would obviously impinge, even just by virtue of its length, on many more sites.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road