Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his contribution. In regard to the approximately 20,000 licences, how much has been preserved in situ from those excavations? Has any of it become part of, say, Ireland's Ancient East or anything else that is promoted publicly?

Turning to my amendment No. 90, I acknowledge the Minister of State does not agree with me on the need for a national monuments advisory council, which we have discussed previously and will discuss again. Nevertheless, the proposed subsection (5) outlined in the amendment will provide that any decision to take a register action to remove a monument from the register shall be done in the interests of archaeology or health and safety. Moreover, and significantly, having consulted the Heritage Council or anybody else, the Minister will then be “guided” by those views on taking the action or not.

The worry is that the language in the Bill is too loose in that it provides only that the Minister will “consult", but the Minister of the day will then be able to go off and decide to do whatever he or she wishes. There have, at times, been Ministers who simply do not value heritage and consider it an inconvenience. Due to ministerial decisions going back to the 1960s, significant parts of our heritage were destroyed simply because the Ministers of the day did not value it. In fact, in the late 1950s and the 1960s, there was a period of about ten years where there was a rush towards modernity and towards destroying everything that was old or belonged to a different era. Within ten years, most people in the country formed the view that this was a terrible approach, but we can go through periods for whatever reason. To be fair, we were coming out of the Second World War and a period of poverty. A lot of our building stock in that period was in very poor condition and there were slums, so we can understand how, in a certain context, sufficient value at a societal level might not have been placed on parts of our built heritage. Within ten years, however, most people in the country had moved back to the point of valuing it. There can be a great deal of destruction if a particular Minister or party with a particular viewpoint gets into government, and that can never be undone.

My amendment, therefore, is about having sufficient checks and balances such that these decisions will be taken properly and it will not be a case of the Minister needing just to consult. Rather, he or she will have to be guided by those views.

I would be grateful if the Minister of State were to address those parts of my amendment and tell the committee whether he feels they are covered and how or whether he would be on open to taking on board those parts.