Ms Rosemary Collier:

Under the current legislation and when this new Bill is brought through, the option will be open to the Minister with responsibility for heritage to designate a monument requiring special protection. It is then open to him or her to decide if it is of national significance from a cultural or archaeological perspective. In that scenario, it would fall to the Commissioners of Public Works to conserve and preserve that monument. That is the process we have worked and will continue to work to. There are provisions that it would be done in consultation. In assessing the significance of the monuments, the commissioners have a role and engage with the Department in that process but we would play our part downstream of the decision on the designation.

It is not that the commissioners are necessarily seeking to take a suite or cohort of monuments that need care. Deciding that they are of national significance and require that special protection and designation is a matter for the Minister. Care from the Commissioners of Public Works would follow. Given our current resources, we struggle to care for the sheer volume of sites under our remit. We have 29 island locations and more than 1,000 structures across 26 counties.

We have 1,200 staff working in heritage but we have a hugely geographically dispersed portfolio ranging from Neolithic sites right to more modern heritage structures. The resources we currently have would obviously need to be looked at in respect of additional responsibilities that might be assigned to the commissioners in respect of additional sites.

We engage with the process every year through the Estimates process and would make the case for that. It cascades or flows fundamentally from a Minister's designation, however, and then our role and statutory function is defined in the Bill. That is how it would come about.

Of course, we should be grateful for the protection of our national monuments and monuments generally. A diverse collection of organisations, people and communities right across the State protect our national heritage. They do great work with the Heritage Council and other stakeholders across the sector and we should be grateful to them. The State cannot do everything so a complex network and selection of organisations are involved. Our role would absolutely cascade from the statutory provisions in the Bill, however.