Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney is lending his support to a celebratory festival at Tara, in opposition to controversial plans for the M3 motorway.

The event has also received the backing of poet Paul Muldoon, and a number of Irish musicians.

The 'Turn on Tara' event will kick-off the first day of Heritage Week, next Sunday.

Organised by Save Tara campaigners, the aim is of the event is to allow the Irish Diaspora to honour the historic Meath site.

Heaney has been particularly vocal in his objection to the construction of the motorway, which will run through the ancient seat of the Irish High Kings.

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Speaking recently, the poet said the motorway "literally desecrates an area - I mean the word means to desacralise and, for centuries, the Tara landscape and the Tara sites have been regarded as part of the sacred ground.

"If ever there was a place that deserved to be preserved in the name of the dead generations from pre-historic times it was Tara."

Muldoon is another outspoken critic of the motorway.

In 2006 he wrote in the New York Times: "The routing of a busy road slap bang through the Tara-Skryne Valley represents an act of vandalism with not only national, but international, ramifications."

Environmentalists have called for a halt to construction of the controversial motorway along its present route.

See: Stop M3 Route Over Hill, Says Tara Campaigners

(PR/JM)