Mr. Ian Lumley:

The Deputy quite rightly said that the Convention for the Protection of the Architectural Heritage of Europe is the Granada Convention and we have the Council of Europe Landscape Convention which includes cultural landscapes such as industrial heritage and parklands or agricultural heritage; Mediterranean olive grove terraces or the stone walls of Aran would qualify as cultural landscapes. There is very much an overlap between these conventions that all relate to cultural heritage. The Deputy quite rightly highlighted some other ones which are a major issue, especially in conflict zones such as Afghanistan where there is major pillage and theft of artefacts which then appear on the international antiquities market.

Indeed, we have some of those concerns in Ireland, where sheela na gigs and early grave slabs were being stolen from sites and there was stuff going to the US that was certainly a concern. I remember it was very serious back in the 1990s. Fortunately, we seem to hear less of that now. What we should look at in Ireland as a developed country - whether through the Paris Agreement on climate action, the UN Convention on Biodiversity and these cultural heritage conventions through the United Nations or the Council of Europe - is to take leadership in the most active implementation of those conventions. The overriding one here is to properly endorse and recognise the Valletta Convention and to explicitly incorporate the specific, most relevant provisions of the convention that are needed to give that wider protection, in particular, to archaeological complexes and landscapes and considering the settings of archaeological monuments, be they urban or rural.