Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Newman, who has a very impressive CV. It is quite difficult to pin down one aspect because the remit is so wide, so I will just ask some questions to tease out the issues.

Mr. Newman referred to the Heritage Council's sectoral role and the heritage network. I am very interested in this because, clearly, some aspects are very fragmented. Mr. Newman would obviously have a role in terms of the archives. Anyone having experience of either formal or informal records can see there is a huge missed opportunity in this regard. For example, even the railway records are a substantial set of records which are maintained by a voluntary archivist, and then there are the major archives maintained by the General Register Office, GRO. How would Mr. Newman envisage pulling all of that together or is this possible? Would money be available from the Ireland Fund of from philanthropy? This is not just about our heritage for those living on the island but it is also very much that those records belong to the people who emigrated and who want to reconnect with that sense of place that can be created when they find a location to which they are connected. There is a huge opportunity but we are not exploiting it, except in a piecemeal way. For example, the GRO records could be a very good census substitute if they were searchable online, and this is an opportunity that could be cost-neutral.

Reference was made to the work of the Irish Walled Towns Network. The history of the walled towns is fascinating but it has largely gone unnoticed up to the recent past. Does the Heritage Council have other initiatives which would be packageable in the same way as that network? It is useful to see what can be done but what we have not been able do because of the lack of funding. I am shocked by the reduction in the amount of money available to the Heritage Council as I had not realised it was that much.

With regard to the area of planning and the national landscape strategy, during the Celtic tiger madness it was a rearguard action to try to keep things that were worth keeping, and I found myself in that position on several occasions. In terms of getting people to buy into the landscape strategy, how does the Heritage Council develop policy whereby people actually value something in its own right before it gets rezoned because there is a lovely landscape or a gorgeous building? Will there be engagement in that policy formation in a wider sense? Clearly, if one develops a landscape strategy, there will be limitations, and it is these limitations that often come into conflict.

I was very impressed with the number of people employed. When one thinks of the Guinness Hop Store and the Cliffs of Moher centre in County Clare, we can see why there would be both private and public sector employment. I am curious about the engagement with philanthropy and the prospects for the Ireland Fund, as well as the potential for developing the sectoral role to a greater extent.