Ms Rosemary Collier:

We are delighted to work with local communities and landowners. On the question of protection, it is really important we get reports from people. The Deputy mentioned camping and vandalism, for example, and I encourage people to engage with the OPW to work against such activity. That local partnership is critical to how we protect monuments, particularly those that are in very remote or inaccessible locations.

We will certainly look at the idea mentioned by the Deputy of having a dedicated team. The inland islands have extraordinary and particular heritage that must be looked after.

The challenge is resourcing. The conservation architect who looks after inland islands, the fantastic Ms Michele O'Dea, also looks after all the islands off the coast of Mayo as well as Donegal, Sligo and Galway, so she has a huge geographic area under her remit. We will take Deputy Flaherty's comments away with us and look at whether there is a specific project for the inland islands. Again, however, it comes back to the resourcing challenge.

Deputy Flaherty mentioned a native breed of cattle and working with landowners. The OPW has developed a biodiversity strategy for the organisation, which we will launch shortly. It cascades from the national biodiversity action plan. One of the core elements and objectives of the strategy is to make sure we undertake detailed biodiversity audits and studies of our sites. In that context, we would in time be happy to look at the island sites the Deputy mentions, to undertake a detailed biodiversity study of them and to look at recommendations as to what could be achieved there. If there is an appropriate recommendation on the introduction of particular breeds of cattle, we would be happy to look at that, but the strategy cascades from the assessment and the audit in the first instance. We did a year-long biodiversity audit at Áras an Uachtaráin with Professor Jane Stout, and one of the recommendations of the audit was to look at the introduction of a particular rare breed of cattle. We would be happy to engage further on that.