Dr. Martina Moloney:

I thank the Senator for his kind words. Indeed, our paths have crossed before. His point on public understanding of what the Heritage Council does is certainly very well made. We are there to help and support people who, like us, are passionate about heritage. It is an ask from us of the committee to give us the exposure so that we can spread that news. We are building our profile in order that people understand that we are here to help and support them through our very broad remit and areas of activity, which include grants programmes and advisory programmes.

The Senator mentioned the area of policy. We input into policy on an ongoing basis. At very many meetings of the Heritage Council we make submissions to developments by other agencies in the heritage field and feed in our views on how they can strengthen and advance their activities in the policy area.

To clarify, funding for the heritage officer programme is still part funded by the Heritage Council. From our perspective, it is very important that that continues and will be recognised as a very positive contribution in the recent review of the heritage officer programme. We not only help in the financial area with salaries but also by supporting the network of local authority heritage officers and ensuring that we have regard to and support their training needs.

On Heritage Ireland, the Heritage Council assisted the Department in doing quite a lot of work in the consultation area the Senator referred to. We have a direct line of sight to the various stakeholders and it was certainly a very interesting consultation exercise. Quite a few key themes emerged from it. I will ask Ms Teehan to take us through some of them.

We have just commenced work on the preparation of our strategic plan for 2022 to 2027 and have had some initial discussions. We will be very happy to share the plan with the committee when it is completed.