Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all of the witnesses. They are one the most relevant group of people who have come here and I am delighted to see them.

I have had the privilege of covering many of the annual heritage weeks as part of a radio programme broadcast by RTÉ. The subjects for the radio programmes have ranged from moths in County Cavan to the sounds of nature at the dark sky park in Ballycroy National Park in County Mayo, which is extraordinary.

The witnesses sound extremely positive. However, there are fewer curlews and finches, our streams and rivers are not what they should be and we are way behind Europe in terms of all of these things. One can speak about people, place, nature and culture but each area is enormous. Do the witnesses think we need a Department dedicated to just heritage? People say that they are part of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Let us say that we are all part of one mother ship, that we are all going to shop at Tesco and soon they will be sending us to school. I am not sure about the mother ship business because the Heritage Council is so powerful and delves into so many different areas. One of the ways that the Heritage Council could become even greater at what it does is to become more independent. It fascinates me that the Heritage Council is stuck in the middle of the Department. In one way, I can see the tentacles and obvious connections. In another way, the Heritage Council does not have the same independence of thought. It seems to be caught with that tentacle, conduit and roadmap. Would the Heritage Council be better off fighting for its own heritage Department? I would do so, as well as keeping all of the other moments of people, place, nature and culture, which comes into the arts, language, music, song and everything that we do.

I wonder about it the more I see about the mother ship and the more everybody is under this umbrella. Those involved in heritage are so important and while they are not at the end of a table they are part of a general table. When one thinks of the arts - music, drama, dance and visual art - they too demand a Department. At one stage heritage was with the same Department as sport and at another time it was with tourism. The word "sell" is used all the time. I do not like the word "sell". We are not selling. We have to learn to be. It is us, we do not want to sell it.

One of the main points in what was said by Mr. Starrett is that extra heritage officers are needed. That is fine, but if he wants to find a place in our psyche, be it educational, cultural and all those other areas from the time that we are five until we are 55 or 95, should he not be holding out for a more powerful place within a Department? It is a question. It is an awful pity that Senator Ó Ríordáin did not wait because it might have answered his question.