Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 44:

In page 29, between lines 15 and 16, to insert the following:

“Valletta Convention

3.(1) Nothing in this Act shall be understood to violate or undermine the definitions, principles and requirements outlined in the Valletta Convention to which Ireland is a signatory.

(2) The Minister, the Commissioners, the Board, the Council and each local authority, shall be required to ensure the Valletta Convention is adhered to in full when implementing this Act.

(3) The Minister shall establish regulations to ensure full compliance with the Valletta Convention where clarity is needed in the implementation of this Act.”.

As the Minister of State will know, this issue was a significant area of discussion and some controversy in the passage of the Bill through the Seanad. This amendment seeks to give effect to recommendation 9 of the committee's pre-legislative scrutiny report. My understanding from the debates in the Seanad as well as some of the commentary on the legislation from organisations including An Taisce and others is that there is a genuine concern about full compliance with the requirements of the Valletta Convention arising from the Bill. An amendment was tabled by Senators Victor Boyhan, Alice-Mary Higgins, Tom Clonan, Gerard Craughwell and Lynn Ruane in the Bill's passage through the Seanad. We have tried here to slightly amend that on foot of some conversations the Minister of State had with those Senators at the time. It is really to bind this legislation to definitions within the convention where the Bill is less than explicit, particularly with regard to archaeological reserves, which has been discussed already to quite an extent with Deputy Cian O'Callaghan, in cases where they are no visible remains.

My second amendment in this grouping is No. 268. It is a belt and braces approach from our point of view, to further oblige the Minister to carry out functions under this Act consistent with the Valletta Convention, the European Landscape Convention, the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, the Aarhus Convention, the UN sustainable development goals and the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015. It is interesting to reflect on previous legislation where this has come up. We had it in some of the maritime area planning legislation, where we had a set of European and international obligations. We are often told we have to comply with those obligations anyway and asked why we would specifically reference them in the Act but it seems to me that given there are other areas where we have strong international and European legal requirements and obligations, which we have consistently fallen foul of, with the benefit of hindsight, it would be helpful to contain specific and explicit requirements for the Minister. They would not only be for the Act to be fully compliant with Valletta in this case but also for the Minister, on enactment and when carrying out the functions under the Act, to be fully compliant with that and other legal requirements.