Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are no amendments to the Bill and we welcome it. A total of 126 states are party to the Hague Convention and we want to ensure Ireland makes the necessary provisions in law to ensure it complies with obligations. I acknowledge the work of my colleague in the North, Ms Carál Ní Chuilín, who served as Minister with responsibility for culture, arts and leisure in the Six Counties and supported similar legislation in the Assembly. I welcome the Bill but I also want to see the application of its core values in the country at all times. It is useful to be cognisant of the various aspects of cultural property in this country during peace, and not just in the case of war, as the Bill outlines. It would be farcical to lament the destruction of cultural property in war without applying the same standards to the preservation of such property during peace.

We need only look at the historical quarter around Moore Street, which falls into the broad and positive definition of cultural property as laid down in section 1 of this Bill, yet it remains under threat from the policies of the Government and construction companies. I am thankful we are at peace but I wonder whether outsiders looking in would consider the Government guilty of the destruction of our cultural property in peace through negligence and ignorance. We have seen historic buildings being knocked down by developers because of light-touch legislation in the past and I refer to fighting a legal battle against the likes of the Moore Street campaign with public money in order to side with developers, whose only appreciation of culture is from pictures on bank notes. I commend the Lord Mayor of Dublin, who held a cultural event last weekend on Moore Street that drew attention to the spirit of bygone days, as well as the historic nature of the quarter. I support the Bill but we must also scrutinise what we do during peace as well.