Ms Rosemary Collier:

I thank the Senator for his compliments with regard to Monkstown Castle; they are much appreciated. I will pass them on to the team that looks after it, and we will fix the sign if indeed it did fall down.

On the issue of world heritage, the point we made in the opening statement was for clarity because, again, people think that the OPW fulfils certain roles and sometimes we need to clarify that we do not. We are very happy to work with the Department in terms of how the world heritage process works, however. We participate in the technical group and will do so when it is set up in regard to the tentative list that is being looked at at the moment. In general terms, we are quite happy with how the process works.

Obviously, in terms of ultimate designation, there are implications for the Commissioners of Public Works. The Senator will understand that we care for the two UNESCO world heritage sites of Brú na Bóinne and Sceilg Mhichíl. They have a huge requirement in terms of skilled staffing but also a direct labour workforce, who are very expert in the craft skills required to look after these types of sites. There are, therefore, implications for us in how we do and resource our work and the expert skills that are required. It is very important that we input to that process but I do not think we have a particularly strong view about having a statutory function. It was merely just to clarify that we do not and that it is a matter for the Department. That is the first issue.

The second issue is the uniformity of fining under that part of the Bill. What is attractive to us is the ability to be able to bring in by-laws and that with the permission of the Minister, we can look at a process of enacting by-laws. Sustainable management of these very vulnerable heritage sites is really important.

At the moment, we do not have a full armory in how we can manage those to the optimum. We do not have the ability to adopt by-laws to be able to regulate issues around parking or where we had issue with dogs in relation to protected species on sites and those kinds of things. We welcome that Part of the Bill.

I spoke earlier about the business of how we would implement or operate a system where one can actually identify somebody who has breached something and then fine them. We would like to see how this progresses and give it further consideration. We think that if it is applied judiciously, it would be very welcome but we obviously need to work through the practicalities of that.