Dr. Martina Moloney:

I am particularly passionate about community heritage. I have seen the value it brings from the bottom up in building community, sense of place and pride of place. The suggestion the Deputy made around naming is one we will take away with us. I have seen it working - "sporadically" is a good word for it - in different parts of the country. Some people have naming committees in place and some insist the names are in Irish and related to the heritage and history of the area. That will be one of our takeaways from today.

An initiative I have been involved in in a voluntary capacity is the Burrenbeo Trust, which identifies place-based learning as its key priority. It is embedded in the local area and does a lot of good programmes in the national and secondary schools in its area, built around what is in the curtilage of the catchment area of the school. I would like the Heritage Council to build on that. Maybe we could spread that into wider currency across the country.

The same organisation has done quite a lot in working with voluntary groups - in Tidy Towns, for instance - to encourage them to develop their local heritage plans. That might address the Deputy's second point somewhat around the participation and resourcing of communities who might not be as able to access or understand the opportunities funded and supported by the Heritage Council to encourage communities to learn from and help one another along the way. I envisage we will continue to resource that area.

A priority area identified for the new heritage plan is that of inclusion. We want to ensure heritage belongs to everybody and that new communities or people who feel excluded for other reasons are recognised as being important. Some projects in national heritage week 2021 in the area of inclusion were heartening exemplars of best practice that we hope to build on and that will inspire others.