Children in Ireland have been filmed screaming in anguish as a tree beside their school is torn down, campaigners have claimed.
In footage shared to social media on Wednesday purports to show pupils yelling for the destruction to “stop”, while a digger hacks a large branch off its trunk.
“Stop killing our tree,” children can be heard shouting, amid a chorus of screams off camera.
The clip is said to have been taken in Enniskerry, County Wicklow, where local objections have been raised to plans for new housing developments.
The tree had been home to a bird of prey, local campaign group Save Enniskerry claim, describing the children’s reaction as “a true outpouring of emotion falling on deaf ears”.
“The tree was part of a hedgerow in quite an ecologically sensitive and diverse area,” 58-year-old Save Enniskerry member and mother-of-four, Anita Tuesley, told The Independent.
“Both the tree and hedgerow are around 100 years old, there was a hawk in residence and there are bat roosts in the vicinity.”
There is no suggestion any regulations had been broken by the felling of the tree.
According to Save Enniskerry’s Facebook page, the group is “dedicated to preserving the heart, natural beauty and environment of the village”.
It adds: “In recent months the quantity and scale of development applications that have been seen popping up has been surprising and not at all in keeping with the infrastructure and services available to the community.”
The village is small, has no secondary school, limited public transport and roads which are “more suited to cyclists and ramblers and with wildlife and hedgerows”, the group says.
The footage appears to have been taken at Powerscourt National School, which is the oldest primary school in Ireland, having celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2018.
The school sits just a kilometre away from Powerscourt Estate, which is home to the tallest tree in Ireland – a Douglas Fir thought to be the seventh tallest tree in Europe.
According to the Irish Independent, plans were lodged by separate developers in December which could see over 320 homes built in the village, which had a population of fewer than 2,000 people at the 2016 census.
The paper reported that Ireland’s national planning board also granted permission last August for a housing development of 165 units and a creche at a site on Cookstown Road, which runs alongside the school.
