Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Ministers of State, Deputies Carroll MacNeill and Noonan, and their officials. The presentations by both Ministers of State were extraordinarily interesting. They showed that they have a very keen interest in this area. All of us really want to maintain our heritage thatch buildings throughout the country. However, as I said here at one of the previous meetings at which we discussed this, is it not the case that the problem here is trying to maintain a beautiful old tradition while modernising houses? The Minister of State, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, mentioned radiators. There are phone chargers, car chargers and all these other electrical items. We all realise that there is a bit of a problem in that regard and that getting around it is the issue. Interestingly, she mentioned that 55,000 thatched or houses in Denmark have thatched roofs. There must be a way around this. Could we look at more research, for example, whereby a product could be used under the thatch and there could be a thinner amount of thatch to prevent fire or whatever happening or completely destroying the property? There must be a way of getting around this. I do accept, however, and I think we all have to accept, that it is very hard to maintain this old tradition under a structure that is modernised.

I was recently in a most beautiful place, Williamstown, County Galway. I do not know if the Minister of State is aware of it. It got a heritage award only recently. The celebrations were there last weekend. It is just an old structure in a rural area near the village of Williamstown, an area of thatched buildings. I encourage the Ministers of State to visit it sometime or to look it up on social media. It is just fantastic. There are areas like that which have not been over-modernised, and I do not think they have difficulty getting insurance cover. Is research ongoing in that regard, and do the Ministers of State agree that the difficulty here, even for the insurance industry, may be trying to keep the thatch and still having to acknowledge that houses must be modernised to a present-day standard? Between global warming and electricity, how will we deal with these structures?

Those are my questions. I thank the Ministers of State most sincerely for being here. I found their presentation really interesting.