Ms Shirley Clerkin:

I thank the Senator for her very interesting perspective. We are used to working in collaboration with others from a local authority heritage officer perspective. We are based in local authorities and we are local authority employees. We are co-funded with the Heritage Council so we work very closely in that networked sense. We also communicate with the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government but we are very strongly linked with the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. That collaboration works very well for us.

I agree with what Senator O'Donnell said about the extinction of key wildlife species, biodiversity and the ecosystem services that those species and habitats support. That is very important. In our collaborative way we work with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which is based in this Department, the National Monuments Service and the national inventory for architectural heritage. We try to link with all of those different agencies and we work very closely with the Heritage Council. I do not know so much about the Departments but it is very useful that the Heritage Council is an independent established body to promote this national agenda.

The loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services is a very key issue for us. We work with biodiversity issues and heritage issues together. A lot of our heritage plans are now combined heritage and biodiversity. Heritage has a key role to play in sustainable societies, whether that is reusing heritage assets in historic buildings, which is retaining their resource value, or conserving wildlife habitats and helping communities to do that or promoting agri-environment schemes which are results based, and to try to help people have livelihoods in rural areas. We are very much trying to work in that sphere but we definitely require more resources to help us to do that, in particular going forward. I agree with what Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell said about the need for more resources.