Mr. Conor Newman:

I will try to answer as best I can. Deputy Bannon referred to how, notwithstanding the success of heritage week, monuments were being destroyed around the country on an ongoing basis.

The only answer is public awareness and education and placing a greater emphasis on conservation in the course of schooling. The implication of what the Deputy said is that our generation was not exposed enough to such thinking. I mentioned in my written presentation - although I did not read it into the evidence - that we could all benefit from returning to the classroom to learn about the vulnerability of monuments.

Some monuments appear to be more vulnerable than others. As the Deputy mentioned, ring forts are being destroyed on a regular basis and part of the problem is the definition of monuments. He asked how does one define a monument? I shall segue and ask why is no action taken when a monument is destroyed? In this regard I cannot answer the Deputy's latter question. I do not know why more punitive action is not taken when monuments are destroyed. We have a poor track record for doing so. The Heritage Council is not the regulatory body and, therefore, it is not our function to rap people on the knuckles for destroying a monument. It would be nice to see the regulatory body, the National Monuments Service, being encouraged to be more proactive in terms of punitive interventions in the case of reckless destruction.

The solution is difficult because often the people who are involved in and responsible for the destruction are not going to be changed. These situations must be handled carefully because we do not have the people power to monitor the monuments and landscape all of the time. Even national monuments are not monitored on a 24-hour basis. As the committee will know, a couple of years of ago the Lia Fail standing stone on the Hill of Tara was damaged with hammer blows and, again, nobody was monitoring the site. Trust and faith are greatly important principles behind the preservation of monuments and landscape but they must be underpinned by education. The Heritage Council is trying to provide such education and the State services could lend more weight to that agenda.

Deputy Bannon suggested that more local material should be made available to local museums and so on. That scheme is evolving but slowly. The Heritage Council introduced a museums standards programme quite a number of years ago. Local museums can go forward for accreditation and are chaperoned and tutored through the process of improving every aspect of their offering as a museum. That includes recording, security and emergency measures, lighting and all of the different things that make up a certifiable museum. The success of the programme has resulted in better museums being distributed around the country and, therefore, the national collection being accordingly distributed to those museums.

The National Museum of Ireland is the primary repository of archaeological material. With the standards of museums improving it is more willing to lend material. The worst thing that can happen is that objects are lent or given to museums that are not in a position to look after them so they can be lost or whatever. These are the things that we need to be careful about. I agree with the Deputy that every county should have its own museum which should be the primary port of call for people living in and visiting the county who want to get a sense of its history and vernacular. It is a subject where the Deputy and I would share common ground.

Like the Deputy, I live in an area that has thatched houses. They are disappearing bit by bit. It takes a lot of commitment on the part of the owner-occupier to preserve them. I agree with him that we need to spend more money on preservation. The Heritage Council has very little money but we match the grant provided to cover the cost of thatching. The council has its own rubric. It wants vernacular thatching designs and techniques used so that a project does not just look like a thatched house but has genuinely been thatched in the manner that is appropriate to its region and county and also, as far as possible, local materials are used. Our insistence of that does not just keep authenticity but generates employment. As the Deputy will probably know, quite a lot of the reeds are imported from Turkey. Ireland is capable of producing its own reeds and there is a small nascent industry developing in the River Shannon callows, particularly down the south east aspect where people are harvesting and growing reeds, in so far as one can grow a natural product.

The Deputy is right. Thatched houses are also a concern of mine. I would hate to see them reduced to just photographs on John Hinde postcards because that would be the last of them. They are part and parcel of who and what we are and they are beautiful. The Heritage Council is very aware of the problem. One of its newly appointed members is Dr. Fidelma Mullane and she is an expert in vernacular architecture and thatching and has been an inspector of thatching for a number of years. The Deputy can be confident that particular ball will not be dropped by the Heritage Council. If we can promote and develop it then that is exactly what we will do.

Deputy Bannon also called for more heritage trails. We do need more access to the Irish landscape. We have had a couple of really shining success stories in recent years. For example, the Newport-Mulranny cycle track that has now been extended to the Westport-Achill cycle track. It has opened up a big chunk of the landscape and part of it utilises a disused railway line. A lot of visitors have used it. I have cycled it twice and my daughter has cycled it three times. If one goes to the Headford Road, near where I live, on a weekend one can see that every second car driving in the direction of Mayo has bicycles strapped on its back or roof-rack. Mr. Manchan Magan has written eloquently on the economic benefits to be gained from the cycle track. Galway County Council, for instance, is planning to extend the cycle trace the whole way around Lough Corrib and back into Galway. The plan is afoot as we speak. That is just one example.

People have a great appetite for accessing the landscape. Many of the applicants to the Heritage Council are developing trails and now forms part of what they approach us for. Of course the more money that we have then the more trails can be developed in a sustainable way.

Sustainability is one of the things that we need to be careful about, an aspect I mentioned in my presentation. If we are going to spend so much money advertising Ireland as a tourism destination then we must ensure that tourist activities are managed in a quiet way so they do not destroy the very thing that they come here to see. Bringing a bit of science and research to bear on trail development and so on is very important because it will protect it into the future.

The committee may be familiar with Croagh Patrick, which I climbed last year. The trail of destruction along its side is of genuine concern to everyone who lives there. We must figure out ways to allow people have as much access as they want while preserving the site. That involves a bit of science which in turn involves investment, both of which we need urgently. We cannot tart up places and bring tourists in but let them act as agents of erosion and destruction. For example, I see the erosion and so on at the Hill of Tara on a daily basis.

Deputy Bannon suggested that we adopt a holistic approach to the River Shannon and I agree with him. If I could I would give him a job in the Heritage Council because he speaks our language and has raised our exact concerns. A couple of years ago I attended a conference on the management of its river basin. About 15 local authorities are responsible for different areas of the River Shannon. County boundaries run down its middle so different local authorities are responsible for opposite river banks. Consequently, the way the River Shannon and any major river is managed must be holistic, draw on the entire catchment area and be integrated. The Deputy also mentioned the Shannon callows, which is a valuable tradition.

A couple of years ago those of us who live in the west became aware of what happens when one mismanages water and there was massive flooding all over the countryside. That speaks of a lack of and forgetfulness about looking after groundwater. Allowing groundwater to do what it normally does is all part and parcel, not just of our heritage, but our engineering and survival into the future. The Deputy and I speak the same language on this issue as well.

How does one define a national monument? One will see a definition of a national monument in the National Monuments Act 1930. However, fewer monuments today are being declared a "national monument". It seems from my examination a couple of years ago, that there was a rush to declare monuments as a "national monument" around the decade of the foundation of the State. Some of the monuments on the list of national monuments would find it much more difficult to qualify as a "national monument" nowadays. I think we raised the stakes a little bit too high, but in some sense there is this part of me that thinks we should not declare artefacts to be national monuments because that focuses too much attention on one thing to the detriment of other things. I take a more holistic approach which is to encourage the evaluation of everything without special attention to any particular one thing. That is the better way to go because once one designates something as a "national monument" one is automatically stating that something else is not. That can be alienating for people who feel a sense of attachment to the other.