Professor John McCafferty:

Goodwill is possibly the most important thing. I should mention the fact that our income was previously in the region of €260,000 per year and was subsequently adjusted down to approximately €230,000. We would like to see it recover slightly and I am not entirely without hope on that front. We are a board of unremunerated experts, which we are happy about as it gives us freedom of action. The most important thing from our point of view as people who are interested in history, and I think I can speak for my colleagues here, is that we feel passionately that history should not become commodified. It should not become the handmaid to tourism. We can do an awful lot for tourism and heritage but there is something integral about history and it should be free. What I would say to bring all of that together then, is that what we would like in terms of the goodwill of the committee in this regard is to ensure that the collective memory of the inhabitants of this island remains free and accessible to all of them, as far as possible.