Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State and the departmental officials for the work they have done so far on this. We appreciate their time today and that they have brought forward the general scheme. I particularly acknowledge the comments made by Ms Connolly about Moore Street. It would be remiss of me not to thank Ms Foley for the work she did in supporting the Minister's advisory group on Moore Street. See made a great contribution to the work and I thank her for it.

I commend the Minister of State on bringing forward the Bill. It has been spoken about for a long time. Modernising legislation such as this is very welcome. We support his proposals. We want to see the legislation progressed and passed. He has our full support on this. I want to come back to two points that have been touched on by other speakers. These are the issue of monuments and penalties. I have some questions about both. We need to do a bit more work on the register of monuments and the definition of a monument. I am thinking about the discussion with Deputy Ó Broin.

When I think about monuments and the national monument on Moore Street I also think about other very important sites in the north inner city. Mountjoy Square is the finest and most perfect of the five Georgian squares in Dublin. Will this in and of itself as a square be defined as a monument? Will the components of it have to be individually defined as monuments? Senator Seery Kearney mentioned the former Magdalen laundry site on Seán MacDermott Street. I could also mention the courthouse on Green Street, Coláiste Mhuire on Parnell Square and the individual modern and historic built structures in Dublin's north inner city. I support the legislation. We need to recognise that while updating the legislation is important, the real-life activity on protecting, restoring and developing our historic sites and monuments has to be accelerated. The deterioration and dereliction is shameful. I cannot let today's discussion go by without saying this.

I am interested to understand how the penalties will apply. How were the proposed maximum penalties of up to five years imprisonment and a fine of up to €10 million benchmarked? How did the Department come up with these as potential penalties? I would like to understand this. Will the Minister of State give us an example of what would trigger that level of a maximum penalty? We have discussed how there could be aggressive actions to destroy a monument.

I am also interested to know if there will be a penalty for neglect and for destruction through neglect. How would that be applied?