Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I only realised when the Bill was brought forward that some local authorities have an archaeological officer. I have added that to my wish list of what all local authorities should have, along with a county architect, a biodiversity officer and a cycling officer. I now have a fourth role to add to that team. The Minister of State may be interested to know that we have invited the network of local authority archaeologists in for a further session of pre-legislative scrutiny. I do not know if the network has yet responded, but we will engage with it.

We have been talking about planning and the crossover in the context of protected structures. The weakest link in planning has always been enforcement. The forward planning has always been good, as has the development consent management. It is in enforcement that the planning system often falls down. Do our guests envisage that, with the inventory or licensing system that will be introduced under the Bill which will be a fit-for-purpose way of managing our archaeological heritage, we will also have to beef up enforcement capabilities within the Department to deal with cases where it does not go well?