Dr. Sharon Greene:

I might comment on that. This harks back to what Deputy Ó Snodaigh was saying earlier. As we have identified, there are many thousands of sites throughout the country. We cannot practically provide a sign for all of them, even if it is a small one with a QR code, given a QR code leads to a website someone has to manage, upload information to and so on, so it is not necessarily a practical answer. Moreover, we do not want people to end up with the impression that no signage means no protection. We need people to understand that all our archaeological heritage is protected at some level, and some archaeological and heritage sites are more readily recognised as such. We all know what Newgrange looks like and we gravitate towards using examples of monuments such as tombs and so on that people can readily recognise, but some sites are not recognisable to people who do not already have an interest or who are not familiar with the locality.

I recognise the work being done throughout the country through schemes such as the Adopt a Monument scheme that was mentioned earlier and the Irish Walled Towns Network, as well as work done by the Heritage Council and local authority community heritage grants. Many communities are taking this on themselves, getting funding and expert advice and putting signs on monuments in their localities. Of course, the OPW also provides a certain degree of interpretative information at national monument sites. We need to clarify, because it is not always clear to people, that not every monument that stands above the ground is a national monument. National monuments are in the care of the State or a local authority. Most of our monuments are just recorded monuments and are protected under the legislation as such. In the vast majority of cases, they do not have signs. It is more important that we, on a more general level, raise awareness and knowledge of the types of sites in our landscape and promote an appreciation of what they are, what they mean and how we should treat them. We should not just worry about, for example, a farmer deciding a bump in his field has been a pain for too long and he is going to plough it out. The same is true of places that are open to the public where people walk over ramparts and force a path that causes erosion, or where people are involved in hobbies such as mountain-biking, scramblers and so on, which also cause inadvertent damage to monuments. What we need is a campaign of public education on this front.