Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I am not seeking hundreds of thousands of people to be trampling over sites, but ours is now an open society and head 9 relates to the establishment of a register. If that register becomes available and a site is registered as attracting 130,000 visitors a year, whether there is a sign on it or not, the public will be entitled to know there is something there. The site will then get an archaeologist, a person with a metal detector or just somebody who decides he or she cannot go to Newgrange, given an appointment is needed to get in there, so he or she will visit another one, without understanding the delicate nature of some of these monuments because they have not been looked after and are exposed. Traipsing over a monument that has not had the care and love of archaeologists or whomever can damage it.

Once a monument is included on a register, it raises another question, namely, how to protect it even if it is not in State hands. In the case of a farmer who owns lands on which there are a number of sites, the farmer will look after them, so we can just leave them there. Farmers do not have the money to look after them but nature will look after them on their behalf. If, all of a sudden, the monuments are included on a register, we will get people traipsing all over private land, and we have seen cases of farmers kicking up about that because of liabilities and so on. Those who own a private property will argue the State is taking on a duty of care to the site or of protection for the landowner given the site will have been identified. There are many questions in this context and I am not the expert.