Mr. Seán Kirwan:

In terms of who is responsible for keeping the inventory, that power would be vested in Minister. It would be a central national function. It is giving statutory effect to what has been going on for a long time in terms of there being a national archaeological survey of Ireland that the national monuments service maintains on behalf of the Minister. It is also continuing on the national inventory of architectural heritage and the historic wreck inventory. All of those are national functions and it is a national data source, so that is maintained and run by the Department. Of course, it feeds very much into what local authorities do because it is a data source that is available to them to draw on, as we have noted in relation to their development plans and so forth. Therefore, it is a national source.

Again, in terms of what goes into the register, the power of entry in the register vests in the Minister. It is something that runs distinct from planning law and that is an important distinction to bear in mind. We have the record of protected structures, which has been touched on, and we have, under current law, a number of mechanisms under the National Monuments Acts for protecting monuments of archaeological and other interest. It will maintain that distinction. It will not take away from the role of local authorities in the record of protected structures. It will be a national system and the Minister will be the person who, in law, determines what goes into the register and what might be taken out of it if deemed appropriate, at a future stage. However, as we noted, there may be an issue there in terms of drafting for having appropriate safeguards.

To touch on the agriculture issue, it is important to note that under matters as they stand, we work very closely with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and we have a very close relationship with it in terms of cross-compliance under EU regulations in terms of farm payments. The data we have and what we have in our current systems feed into what the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine does in terms environmental protection. We would see the new national register and integrating the existing mechanisms into one national register as very much supporting the work we would do currently with the Department of Agriculture.