Ms Clare McGrath:

Forgive me. We are actively working to ensure the preservation and conservation of the Skelligs to the highest national and international standards. It is a discrete area, but we interact with visitors. In our management of visitors to world heritage sites such as the Skelligs and Brú na Bóinne, we ensure that we are not doing harm to what we are preserving. We developed a separate visitor centre in Brú na Bóinne because there had been an impact. This question arises in other jurisdictions. There is a constant balancing.

I would hope that I would never be coming looking for money to that extent for Skellig Michael. I might be looking for money for somewhere else but it would be around enhancing the visitor experience while doing the least harm to the monument. I mean that in the best sense. The monument is what brings the visitor but we must determine how to best manage that.

There is a difficulty for this committee in terms of measuring the outputs, in a qualitative sense, connected with our care of the national monuments. In the context of international delegations and being assessed by the likes of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, ICOMOS, I would like to see that we meet the criteria. We look at the outputs in the context of the visitor experience and that is more measurable.

If there is something from the committee's point of view that would be helpful in this space, I am receptive to that. We have been looking at our office accommodation estate but maybe we should be focusing more on our monument estate, although there are different internal rules in that regard. Maybe we could ascertain if there is something there that could be helpful. I would ask that the committee secretariat liaises with my officials to try to determine if there is something we can do that might be helpful to the committee.