Two anti-roads protesters from the Glen of the Downs in Co Wicklow were injured yesterday during a stand-off between the protesters and council workers, gardai and tree-fellers.
Notices of motion in the High Court by the county council were served on Some 30 named protesters.
Among those injured were a man, who was taken to Loughlinstown hospital suffering a suspected broken leg after falling from a tree, and a woman who sustained minor injuries when her hand was caught in branches.
One protester who has been living in the Glen almost continually for almost three years, described yesterday's move by tree-fellers as "a rounding-up exercise". They had not come to take down the trees, he said. Another protester said it was a cynical ploy to bring protesters out to receive injunctions.
According to one protester the injuries occurred as the tree-fellers, gardai and council workers arrived from the northern end of the Glen. "Lorraine was screaming because she caught her hand. We didn't do anything at first because we thought that she was screaming for the trees."
Once the chainsaws started, protesters arrived from both sides of the Glen. The paper served included a notice of motion to be made in the High Court next Monday for orders of attachment and/or committal against the named defendants and others.
In an affidavit enclosed for the court and copied to the protesters, county council employees allege that on many occasions they had attempted to serve notice on the protesters, but the protesters had not made themselves available. Copies were left in an empty tent and around the camp.
However, while the protesters determinedly followed the tree-fellers and stood in the way as they attempted to fell a number of scrub ash trees, the whole event was a largely good-natured affair. Council workers did manage to cut a small number of ash trees near the roadside in what gardai at the scene described as "a minor clean-up".
Photographs were taken and a video-recording was made of the protesters, who in turn took photographs and video-recorded gardai and council workers.
In one exchange, a protester shouted from a tree to the tree-fellers "you have no love for this place, you have no solidarity in this county at all", to which the tree-feller replied laughing, "I'm not from this county".
One woman screamed "bastards!" at the crowd below, and when one tree-feller objected to the presence of a six-year-old local girl on safety grounds, a protester shouted in reply "you are the ones causing the danger".
Local Green Party councillor Ms Deirdre De Burca, one of a number of councillors who met the protesters last weekend, said that a hydro-geologist had prepared a report exposing design flaws in the road-widening scheme. "It means that the habitat will be destroyed in 10 years if the scheme goes ahead."
A two-man American camera crew was also present. They said they were film students from New York University spending a semester at the Institute of Technology in Dun Laoghaire.
