Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I welcome everyone to the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage where we recommence our pre-legislative scrutiny of the general scheme of the monuments and archaeological heritage Bill. We are joined from An Taisce by Mr. Gary Freemantle, interim chief executive officer Mr. Ian Lumley, head of advocacy, and Dr. Mark Clinton, monuments and antiquities. We are also joined from Archaeology Ireland by Dr. Sharon Greene, from the Local Authority Archaeologist’s Network by Dr. Ruth Johnson, network chairperson, and from Transport Infrastructure Ireland by Mr. Rónán Swan, head of archaeology and heritage. I thank them all for their attendance here today, for their submissions and opening statements in advance, and for assisting us in trying to craft this legislation so that it is fit for purpose.

On privilege, I must remind members of the constitutional requirement that members must be physically present within the confines of the place where the Parliament has chosen to sit, namely, Leinster House, in order to participate in the public meetings. For those attending the meetings remotely from within the Leinster House complex, they are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their contribution to today's meeting. This means that they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. For witnesses attending remotely from outside the Leinster House complex, there are some limitations to parliamentary privilege and, as such, they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as a person who is physically present within the Leinster House complex. Both members and witnesses are expected not to abuse the privilege they enjoy and it is my duty as Chair to ensure that this privilege is not abused. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in respect of an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks and it is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

Members and witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

I will ask our expert witnesses to make their opening statements and we will then move to a questions and answers session with members. To keep the meeting flowing we will keep those segments to seven minutes, which is seven minutes in total for the question and the answer. We have much expertise both online and in the room so if members wish to put a question directly to one of our witnesses, that would also be helpful. If any of the witnesses wish to contribute they may raise their hands to indicate that they wish to come in on an answer and I will try to accommodate that as best as possible.

I now turn to Mr. Freemantle, on behalf of An Taisce, to make his opening statement.

Mr. Gary Freemantle:

I thank the Chairman. The National Monuments Act was passed in 1930. Over the ensuing years, there have been periodic amendments with one motivation, that is, to perfect, strengthen and streamline the protection of our national built heritage. As a result, the heritage protection legislation of this State reached the point of being the envy of colleagues from most other European jurisdictions, that is until the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 2004 undid all the good work of previous generations and cast us, in legislative terms, back into the Stone Age.

In 2001, the Heritage Council published Archaeological Features at Risk: A Survey measuring the Recent Destruction of Ireland’s Archaeological Heritage. The survey established that 34% of the State’s archaeological monuments had been destroyed since 1840, and that the destruction was continuing at an alarming rate with land "improvement" work bearing a large responsibility for the ongoing destruction. However, despite this warning, the 2004 amending Act determined that: "The consent of the Minister ... shall not be required where the works [relate to] an approved road development". In the case of a national monument, the Minister could: "issue directions to the road authority concerned" to: A: "preserve it", B: "renovate or restore it", or C: "demolish or remove it wholly or in part...". It is of great relief to find that this latter clause will be consigned to the dustbin. We are left, however, with an enduring negative impact and legacy by the ethos created by the 2004 amending Act.

This State has never failed to promote and trade on the great history and heritage of the island. Fáilte Ireland relentlessly sells it abroad, Ireland’s Ancient East being one example. Tourists are encouraged to visit our ancient monuments and historic sites. However, as tourism has constantly grown, our menu of sites to visit remains static. Clearly, we need more new sites to cater to an ever-growing number of visitors to our shores. Yet, while archaeologists are finding these new monuments, the State has been busy facilitating their systematic removal, resting on the full support of blatantly discriminatory legislation. However, even if the legislation is rectified, there would still be residual problems. How can it be appropriate for a Minister who has granted an excavation licence on strict archaeological conditions, to be the authority who can subsequently issue the

destruction order for the same monument, in direct contravention of the terms of the original licence? Surely, it should be unacceptable that the fate of a monument is subject to the decision of the Minister of the day. The current Act states that, in considering the fate of a monument, "the Minister ... is not restricted to archaeological considerations [alone] but is entitled to consider the public interest". The relevant Minister will arguably be guided by political expediency. The Minister’s officials and employees will inevitably have to service the agenda of the incumbent.

Archaeology is a broad church. It would be generally accepted that most of the recognised leading authorities on the various elements of archaeology are to be found outside the public service. How can it be acceptable that there is no cultural-heritage court of appeal or ombudsman to adjudicate on the fate of disputed sites and monuments of note? The original monuments Act clearly advanced the concept of having authoritative expert advice readily available to the Minister responsible for heritage in the form of an advisory council. In these modern times the composition of a re-activated advisory council should have a broader representation but be drawn exclusively from a pool of suitably qualified independent candidates, with no conflicts of interest.

Having the input of an advisory council would facilitate openness and transparency. It would create checks and balances, and ultimately confidence and trust in the system. Opposition to the advisory council in the Republic of Ireland would bear a striking resemblance to the opposition generated against the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency. The subsequent work of that agency is now regarded as an essential aspect of Ireland’s protection of the environment.

The 2004 amendment to the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 1994, in the words of the Supreme Court, "removes a bundle of protections" from the Act. This was made crystal clear in the decision by the Court of Appeal on the 1916 Moore Street site. It was ruled that, despite the monument having been declared a national monument, its full extent or historical landscape could only be defined by the relevant Minister. The Court concluded that, as the law stands, it was a matter of "a purely political assessment".

Circa 1,000 monuments at approximately 750 sites are in the ownership or guardianship of the State, that is, in the care of the Office of Public Works, OPW. The remaining approximately 129,000 monuments are in private ownership and vast numbers of them are not accessible to the public. Climate change will inevitably have an adverse effect on many of these monuments, especially those that are of purely earthen construction or located on exposed coastlines. Given the scientific reality of climate change, should the proposed legislation not incorporate the necessary legal procedures under which these increasingly degrading monuments will be properly safeguarded and cared for?

Since 2007, nine prosecutions have been taken by the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP, on the recommendation of An Garda Síochána for alleged offences under the National Monuments Act 1930 and the National Monuments (Amendment) Acts 1954 to 2004. The proposed Bill contains counterproductive defences that could be employed by a person accused of damaging or destroying a monument. It would also:

Provide for the establishment of civil enforcement procedures in relation to contravention of the Act, including powers for the Minister ... to issue enforcement notices requiring the remedying of contraventions of the Act, subject to a right of appeal to the courts.

The former proposition is unwelcome. The latter innovation may prove very useful. It is commendable that the proposed Bill will assist in implementing the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. This convention was ratified by Ireland in 1991. The Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, informed this committee on 27 January that objective D was to provide for the ratification of key international conventions in heritage protection. However, this begs the question of whether this is the correct time and opportunity to implement the 1992 Valletta Convention. It is a valuable heritage protection instrument and has already been adopted by Ireland on 16 January 1992. It came into force on 25 May 1995 and was formally adopted by Ireland in 1997. The convention makes clear that archaeological or historical landscapes must be given full recognition and legislative protection; the "protected monuments and areas" and "archaeological reserves" referenced in Articles 2 and 4 of the convention.

Monuments that can be thousands of years old and are, by their geographical and cultural affinities, intrinsic elements of the very fabric of this nation can reasonably be defined as national resources. Ownership of national resources is vested in the Irish people under the Constitution. These cultural treasures deserve our respect and protection, even if it is against our own agents.

It is time to restore the credibility of the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 2004 and introduce checks and balances into the system. Failure to do so would be unforgivable. The broad thrust of the proposed monuments and archaeological heritage Bill will clearly go a long way to achieve that objective. It might be reasonable to suggest that with adjustments and additions, it could easily achieve more.

An Taisce proposes that the Valletta Convention should be incorporated and implemented into the proposed legislation; that the enhanced legal protection and potential penalties could be seriously offset and largely avoided by the notification of the relevant parties at the earliest opportunity, that is, to prevent destruction rather than to subsequently have to prosecute and to reactivate the monuments advisory council to integrate checks and balances into the proposed legislation.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I ask the witnesses to try to keep their opening statements to approximately five minutes. It will help us. We can return to anything in the statements that is not read into the record when we get to the question-and-answer session.

Dr. Sharon Greene:

The importance and value of the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 2004 has already been spoken about in this forum. At the time it was put together, archaeological heritage played a significant role the building of national identity. By necessity, changing times gave rise to a number of amendments. It has long been acknowledged that a new Bill is required. Both Irish society and the practise and discipline of archaeology have changed in the meantime. However, archaeology is still relevant to Irish society. It plays a role, for example, in promoting a connection with your local area and a pride of place that does not rely on family connections and it can be used to help people to engage on important issues such as climate change.

Continued availability of information on places recorded in existing registers, such as the sites and monuments record, in the proposed new register is essential. The National Monuments Service should be applauded for the accessibility of the current registers and much other important information on its website. Included under head 9 of the general scheme is, "promotion of public awareness of [this] Register" and promotion of knowledge and awareness is key to other aspects of the scheme, especially Part 8 which explicitly refers to the promotion of public knowledge and awareness.

It will be essential that the details of this new legislation reach the general public when the time comes. From our perspective, as communicators of archaeology, it is important to be aware that while there are many ways to make such information available, we must always ask whether it is actually reaching the intended audience.

It is clear that this proposed Bill continues to value our archaeological heritage and prioritise protection of sites, monuments, artefacts and related archaeological evidence. Despite stretched resources, the National Monuments Service, the OPW and the National Museum of Ireland do excellent work in this regard and are always willing to make themselves available to members of the public who seek information or to report new discoveries or damage. Our nationwide network of local authority heritage officers also deserve recognition, as they are recognised as the local point of contact on heritage matters.

My first year as editor of Archaeology Irelandcoincided with the drought of 2018 and the widely publicised discoveries of new sites afforded by the resulting crop marks. It was also the year of the discovery of the four impressive Bronze Age gold rings by a family in Donegal. The public and media interest surrounding both of these events provided the opportunity to raise awareness not only of archaeology but of the obligations of the public in reporting discoveries and to explain how and why this should be done. The result was a marked increase in numbers of newly discovered sites and artefacts reported.

Archaeologists might get the opportunity to share this information. However, the audiences they meet tend to have already encountered or have an interest in archaeology. Yet, archaeology is everywhere and belongs to everyone and we have an obligation to spread awareness of this heritage to all, both for their benefit and its protection. The protect our past code for caring for monuments developed by the National Monuments Service last year is a valuable tool for those engaging with the public. However, advice such as this and the 2014 advice to the public on the use of metal detection devices need to be continually shared and redistributed to ensure they do not become yesterday’s news.

There is considerable public thirst for knowledge about archaeology. However, when the public looks for information on archaeology, this is not generally the kind of information it seeks out. This is why the provision in the proposed Bill for the requirement to label packaging of metal detection devices with a warning about the law with regard to their use is especially welcome. It informs at the point of contact.

Irish archaeologists can be excellent communicators. Many individuals and organisations have excellent publication records using books. Archaeologists also engage with communities nationwide to share knowledge and research by giving tours or presenting talks. A 2018 Heritage Council-Red C survey examined public perceptions of archaeology. It was heartening for those involved in the profession to learn that 91% of respondents saw supporting archaeology as economically important. However, the questions about the ways in which people engage with archaeology provided those of us dealing with communication with pause for thought. The most common medium used is documentaries, with 45% of respondents watching them several times a year. When one adds news reports on television and radio to this, the proportion rises to 71%. Only 54% use the Internet and only 28% use publications.

While respondents agreed that archaeology is important for tourism, they were relatively evenly split when it came to awareness of the impact of high tourist and visitor numbers on sites. Of greater concern, considering the high level of awareness within the profession and the efforts to make the information available, only 30% of respondents were aware that metal detection for archaeological objects without licence is illegal. Consider the importance of the documentaries to which I refer. It is inevitable that most of these are not Irish and, as a result, are potentially misinforming an Irish audience on some of these matters.

Clearly, while community engagement has increased in recent years, some vital information regarding care, conservation and legislation fall by the wayside.

Did the survey results suggest a way to combat this? Perhaps they did.

There are high levels of interest, over 60%, in meeting archaeologists to learn more about what we do and to better understand archaeology’s usefulness to the community. Embedding archaeologists in the community would allow for a proactive as opposed to reactive approach. It might be argued that this role is being filled by local authority heritage officers and there is no question that they have a role. However, the remit of heritage officers is a very broad one that covers archaeology, biodiversity, natural heritage and more. The heritage officers can come from any of these backgrounds. It would be preferable to have a team of heritage professionals in all local authorities.

Recent increased funding for archaeological projects, such as the community heritage fund, are very welcome. However, the capacity for those administering and supporting local funded projects at a local level also needs to be increased. For this reason there is a need for archaeological professionals embedded in communities whether they be local authority archaeologists or some other form of regional community archaeologists.

As communicators of archaeology, we would make the following observations or recommendations to the committee. When including provisions that directly deal with areas where the public engage with archaeology be it with monuments, artefacts or equipment, full consideration should be given to how people encounter and engage with archaeology. This includes the fact that information and equipment can be sourced from outside the State, and that visitors to the State may need advice on Irish law. A fully informed public can play a role in this. Additional resources need to be made available to improve the capacity of existing organisations and institutions to deal with the increasing engagement of the Irish public with archaeological heritage. As shown in 2018 and more recently during the pandemic, opportunities to raise awareness of public obligations can, when taken, result in a marked increase in workload for the authorities responsible for engaging with the ensuing engagement.

Dr. Ruth Johnson:

As spokesperson for the Local Authority Archaeologist Network, LAAN, I thank the Chairman and the committee for the opportunity to attend. Today's meeting is held in advance of the network's scheduled briefing on the Bill with the National Monuments Service. In light of this, and given the relatively short time that we have had to prepare, our response is going to be brief and high level. We would welcome the opportunity to provide the committee with more detailed comments, through correspondence, following the briefing next week.

In 2018, the establishment of the Local Authority Archaeologist Network was approved by the County and City Management Association, CCMA. Our members currently comprise 13 archaeologists working in seven local authorities, which are Cork city and county, Dublin city, and the counties of Kerry, Limerick, Mayo and Meath. The network enables local authority archaeologists to share their professional expertise and join together to engage in communications with other agencies. Local authorities deliver a broad range of services pertinent to that Bill, including planning and development management and care of the local heritage resource. The archaeological resource is largely managed in accordance with the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended.

The county development plans, and local area plans, provide the strategic framework and policy context for local planning decisions. They provide the opportunity to protect, manage and promote archaeological heritage for public benefit at a local level. Many development plans afford safeguards to archaeological sites discovered since the publication of the Record of Monuments and Places. We ask that the new Bill will be designed in such a way as to interact effectively with the Planning and Development Acts, and support the role of local authorities in terms of our archaeological heritage protection.

The Monuments and Archaeological Heritage Bill is an important and very much anticipated piece of legislation. As stakeholders, many of the network members have participated in previous working groups towards the preparation of this scheme. We look forward to seeing a modern, consolidated and legal framework enacted that will meet the many challenges of today's operating environments.

A number of heads in the Bill directly concern local authorities. The network will need more time to consider their implications in this regard and consult. I refer, in particular, to where local authorities may be appointed as guardian by the Minister, in terms of enacted by-laws, and where the Bill refers to burial grounds under head 27.

The network will seek clarity and greater detail on a number of the heads in our forthcoming discussions with the National Monuments Service. In particular, the interpretation and definitions of registered and prescribed monuments, the term "relevant thing", and the levels and mechanisms for monument protection.

There are many practical considerations regarding the interface between architectural heritage and archaeology. We note that there are both overlaps and gaps between the relevant legislative instruments with which we work today that leave gaps for industrial heritage and vernacular architecture. We also have questions on the performance of functions, expenses, landowner consultations, dangerous buildings and environmental impact assessments.

The network welcomes specific aspects of the Bill, including Part 10, which concerns enforcement, and Part 4, which concerns objects. We welcome the heads that concern activities, licensing and inventories. We especially welcome the inclusion, and wish to emphasise their importance, of national guidelines and codes of practice to the committee as these are key to the Bill's successful implementation.

As an addendum to my statement, I wish to take this opportunity to draw the committee's attention, under Parts 8 and 9, to some personal considerations to resources, sustainability and managing the loss of archaeological heritage. This is particularly an issue that affects subsurface archaeologists or archaeology in urban regeneration areas. The principle of preservation in situis enshrined in the existing legislation. It is provided for in this Bill but it can be difficult to achieve, especially in urban settings. Will provision be made for the reporting and evaluation of things of interest that are discovered during, for instance, licensed rescue excavations?

Further, where preservation by record is the agreed option, the project design excavation and post-excavation dissemination strategies are currently variable in rescue excavations. We would like to see a levelling up to those standards currently implemented, perhaps, by Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII. Finally, I wish to refer to excavation results in the loss of the archaeological resource and the creation of a paper record, collection of artefacts and interpretative grey literature. We ask that the committee considers whether the Bill can make provision for the dissemination of grey literature for public benefit as seen in initiatives such as the County Dublin Archaeology Government Information Service, GIS, and TII's web resource.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I thank Dr. Johnson. To answer her comment that LAAN would welcome the opportunity to submit more detailed comments, that option is open to everybody who attends because sometimes witnesses, after they have left a meeting, think of something that they might want to furnish to the committee. I assure everyone that we would find that very helpful.

I do not know if the addendum was sent to us as part of correspondence but it does contain recommendations. That is helpful to us and I note that Dr. Greene, and An Taisce, listed recommendations on the back of their submissions, which is very helpful. We will proceed to publish a pre-legislative scrutiny report with recommendations and then the Bill will be put together.

I invite Mr. Rónán Swan of Transport Infrastructure Ireland, to make his opening statement.

Mr. Rónán Swan:

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for the invitation to attend.

My name is Rónán Swan and I am head of archaeology and heritage with Transport Infrastructure Ireland. Prior to that I was head of archaeology with the National Roads Authority from 2007 to 2015. In total, I have 27 years postgraduate experience as an archaeologist.

I understand that the committee is undertaking pre-legislative scrutiny of the revised general scheme of the monuments and archaeological heritage Bill. In my submission, I will highlight TII’s purpose and outline our approach to managing archaeology and heritage. I will then briefly refer to our consultations with the National Monuments Service of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage regarding this Bill. Finally, I will highlight some of the important aspects of the Bill from our perspective.

As the committee will be aware, TII’s purpose is to provide sustainable transport infrastructure and services delivering a better quality of life, supporting economic growth and respecting the environment. TII delivers new national roads, light railway and metro, as well as active travel and greenway projects. Furthermore, we operate these networks as appropriate.

Regarding archaeology and heritage, our primary objective is to minimise the archaeological and heritage impacts associated with our projects and programmes. TII ensures this through legislative and policy compliance, and proactive risk management which, in turn, helps to build public trust. TII is a key stakeholder within Irish archaeology in terms of commissioning works, promoting best practice, and developing guidelines and standards. TII frequently engages with both statutory and non-statutory stakeholders concerned with heritage matters.

To ensure legislative compliance, we work in close partnership with the National Monuments Service and operate under an agreed code of practice for archaeology.

The most recent code was agreed with the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs in 2017. The purpose of the code is to provide a single framework within existing legislation and policy to enable TII to progress with its programme of work in accordance with the Government's transport plans, for example, the National Development Plan 2021- 2030. TII carries out appropriate archaeological assessment and mitigation having regard to an agreed set of principles. The code requires regular communication between the National Monuments Service and TII with respect to the general approach taken to archaeology, as well as reporting on specific projects. The code is applicable to all TII projects where TII is the approving authority, sponsoring agency, or both. In managing risk, TII considers archaeology from the project's inception to the end of construction. Where practical, TII undertakes advance archaeological works and, when this is not feasible, a bespoke archaeological strategy is developed. This approach is reflected in TII's project management guidelines. Furthermore, we use a suite of contract documents specifically designed for archaeology and heritage services in accordance with the Government's capital works management framework.

In building public trust, TII ensures that the results of archaeological and heritage works on TII's many projects are disseminated widely. For example, making excavation and other heritage reports available through the TII digital heritage collections, which are publicly accessible on the Digital Repository of Ireland; engaging with the public at seminars and presentations; producing web-based story maps and audiobooks; and publishing books on the archaeological and heritage aspects of TII projects - accessible through the TII website. TII is also actively involved in several research initiatives with archaeological partners both here and abroad.

In the context of the code of practice, TII has met the National Monuments Service on a number of occasions to discuss proposed legislative changes. In October 2021, the Department of Transport invited TII to provide comments for the draft memorandum for observation in relation to this Bill. Following this, TII met with the National Monuments Service to review our comments. From TII's perspective, it appears from the revised general scheme that the Bill aligns well with current best practice in the assessment and management of archaeological and historic heritage in the context of delivering transport infrastructure projects and programmes.

TII believes this new Bill is timely, and we consider the following heads to be of particular relevance: head 3, which articulates broad policy principles at the outset; heads 13 and 15, which provide the Minister with the ability to prescribe exemptions in the case of non-damaging works; head 59 on bringing clarity as to which activities are licensable; head 60, which is about introducing an integrated licensing system to replace the multiple approval systems for the conduct of archaeological works, that is, section 26 licences, ministerial consents and ministerial directions for approved road schemes; head 68, which emphasises the importance of research and the promotion of knowledge; and head 70, which provides a statutory basis for the code of practice for archaeology and placing a general obligation on public authorities to have regard to historic heritage in the exercise of their functions.

In addition, TII notes the requirement to report "finds of prescribed monuments" in head 8, and considers that a structured system of reporting should be established, which does not become an administrative burden. TII is of the opinion that there may be a need for secondary legislation to allow for the full implementation of Part 7 licences, which relates to heads 60 to 65.

Finally, regarding inventories, head 66, it is important that all relevant data sets are made available in accordance with open data policies. As the National Monuments Service moves towards completion of a draft Bill, it has agreed to explore with TII how the Bill is anticipated to work in practice. I will endeavour to answer any questions that the committee may have. If I cannot provide a comprehensive answer today, I will provide a response as soon as practicable. That concludes my opening statement. I thank members for their attention.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I thank Mr. Swan. We will now move to questions from members. I forgot to mention at the start of the meeting that Deputy Duffy sends his apologies as he is unable to attend today.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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I thank all the witnesses. We appreciate the time they are giving us in providing opening statements and for their promise of further documentation. It is most helpful to us in our pre-legislative scrutiny. As the witnesses stated, this is very important legislation and we want to get it right. Archaeology is something that sounds dusty and old, but I agree with Dr. Greene's point that it is important to our everyday lives. It reminds us that we are all just passing through, there are those who came before us and those who will come after us. At this moment in time our job is to try to help the Government to get this legislation right. I very much agree with the points that have been made.

I acknowledge An Taisce's reference to the previous Ministers, Michael D. Higgins and Síle de Valera and others who have worked on the legislation in the past. In this slot I will turn to An Taisce and I hope to have an opportunity later to ask more questions. An Taisce has made three specific requests. One relates to the Valletta Convention, which it was stated has been adopted. It would be helpful if the witnesses could explain in more practical terms what specifically would be the benefit of incorporating the Valletta Convention into the proposed new legislation.

An Taisce specifically seeks a reinstatement of the monuments advisory council. I would appreciate if the witnesses could elaborate on what they think the value of reinstating the council would be, what the make-up of the council should be in terms of numbers, the skills and experience individual members should have and what the benefit of that would be.

Mr. Ian Lumley:

The Valletta Convention is one of a number of Council of Europe conventions. There were parallel conventions on landscape and architectural heritage. The Granada Convention on architectural heritage in 1985 was very effectively transmitted into Irish law in 1999 and incorporated into the 2000 planning Act. Despite having adopted the 1992 Valletta Convention in 1997, we have not adopted its key provisions. Like a lot of international conventions, the Valletta Convention is simply named for the place where, in this case, the final signatory meeting took place. It takes its name from the remarkable, historic, fortified city of Valletta in Malta. The convention expanded on previous archaeological conventions in putting new emphasis on the overall context of setting up monuments. I have a copy of the convention here. In particular, Article 1 iii makes specific reference to defining the architectural heritage as not just structures and features themselves but their context, whether situated on land or under water. The wider context is the land or physical setting of the monument. Article 5 iii sets out the principle of the environmental impact assessment process and states that it should involve full consideration of archaeological sites and settings.

An Taisce is one of the many prescribed consultee bodies for archaeology under the planning legislation. I have had oversight of that function for quite a long time. When we get applications of a particular sensitivity, we call in local members, people with expertise, academics and others in particular on more complex projects like road schemes. What we found is that over the years there has been a systemic failure to consider the wider landscape setting and context of a monument or the relationship of monuments and features to their being part of a wider complex, like Tara and Rathcroghan, which I cited in our submission. There was in fact a significant court judgment on this about 30 years ago concerning a dump on the sensitive area of the megalithic complex at Carrowmore in County Sligo. The court judgment concerned the impact on the setting of the archaeological monuments in the landscape. The court recognised that it was not just the archaeological features that were of significance - the structure that could be clearly seen on the ground – but the wider context and setting. That has been increasingly recognised in the archaeological world.

As an article in the magazine, Archaeology Ireland, showed, the drought in 2018, when we had that low rainfall period, dramatically revealed through drone footage and aerial photographs previously unknown sites, and showed that many isolated archaeological sites and features were in fact part of larger complexes surrounding them. This recognition of the setting of complexes that relate to each other, and the setting of monuments, needs to be properly addressed and incorporated into legislation. Looking at planning applications, there is this unwritten rule about 20 m, and there is an emphasis on test trenching and examining the individual site, but not enough consideration is being given to the setting and context of the site. That applies to all categories of development, whether these are big infrastructure or the building of a farm shed structure near a ringfort, where the landscape setting is simply not being properly addressed.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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The second question-----

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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The advisory council.

Dr. Mark Clinton:

The cut and thrust of that would be, and what we are attempting to do is very important, checks and balances. We use the phrase "cultural ombudsman". I looked into it a little more. Currently, there are seven wings or divisions of the Ombudsman covering the Garda, Defence Forces, the press, financial services, etc. I noted that we have An Coimisinéir Teanga, which "enquires into complaints from the public where it is alleged that public bodies may have failed to comply with the Official Languages Act 2003." One option is to go down the road of an ombudsman, such as an teanga Gaelach has. In many ways, the culture and heritage of Ireland is built on two pillars. There is the language, which is for discourse, but also contains within it sagas, stories and legends and is the vehicle for the oral tradition. In respect of monuments, for the people who spoke this language and told these stories, etc., these are the buildings and places they lived in. These are the two pillars of Irish culture. As Dr. Greene said, Ireland is built on its cultural uniqueness. That is why we are a republic. As such, if there is a Coimisinéir Teanga, quite rightly looking after Gaeilge, where is its correlation? There should be a court of appeal of either an ombudsman or an advisory council. The neighbouring jurisdiction has a Historic Monuments Council in Northern Ireland, which is up, running and contributing very nicely.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I am sorry to interrupt Dr. Clinton, but I have to-----

Dr. Mark Clinton:

That is too long.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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It is all relevant, but we are up to nine minutes. I can only keep it to seven minutes. I have no doubt-----

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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I appreciate that my time is up, but can we come back to it in a later round? I think my question was misunderstood. I was not questioning the merit of the proposal. I was asking the An Taisce representatives to elaborate on what they propose the membership would be.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I thank the Senator. I have to give everybody seven minutes. It means everybody gets a chance to answer. Senator Boyhan has nine minutes. I thank him for pointing that out; I said we had gone over nine minutes.

Dr. Mark Clinton:

Will we come back to that?

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Absolutely, we will. It is an important point, as is the recommendation. If everybody sticks to seven minutes, I will have a free round at the end. If everybody assists me with that, we will have a free-flowing meeting.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the presentations and in particular the discussion we have just had around the advisory council. Dr. Clinton might be able to continue that in his answers to me because it is an area where we could have North-South co-operation, given that the Border is a modern construct and we have the whole island in respect of archaeology. The hinterlands people stood in at the time did not have the political boundaries we have now, but different political boundaries. Much of that is to be discovered. They spoke French, Norse and whatever else as well.

I deal with An Coimisinéir Teanga a lot and it would not be the model to follow, in my view, in respect of an ombudsman, because we do not want it to be a complaint after the fact but before it. The model in the North would probably be much better. It would be useful for the committee if a piece of work was done and circulated. Maybe the Oireachtas Library and Research Service could be asked about how different advisory councils work in different jurisdictions. That might be able to feed into the work in preparation for this.

I welcome the quote from the Heritage Council's study that 34% of the State's identified archaeological monuments, and there are so many more as we have seen, have been destroyed. I have not read the report, but does it have a list, or examples, of the destruction and where it is? I know of some but, again, it would be useful if that report was circulated. If it does not have a list, will the representatives provide us with examples of this destruction?

On foot of that, would the representatives accept that the vast majority of people who are owners, holders or protectors of national monuments in fact care for and protect them, given that we have 130,000 or so of such monuments? They do that with little or no help from the State or local authorities and are put in an invidious position where they are expected to look after something for future generations, yet we do not do any work.

I have many other questions, but the final one relates to the identification of these sites. Looking at the defences that can be used, ignorance is one of them. Do the witnesses agree, and this is relevant to the archaeologists, local authorities and the representatives here today, that a lot more needs to be done by the State to identify these sites, whether it is through Google Maps, a cue card or some type of signage, which states that this a national monument and cannot be interfered with, or whatever warning sign?

The Supreme Court judgment in the Moore Street case was mentioned and the finding that the Minister can dictate the full extent of the historical landscape. Do the representatives think, from what they have read so far, that issue is addressed in this legislation?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

Starting with the questionvis-à-visMoore Street, everybody knows the history that the focal of activity was in the GPO and, when that became untenable, the remnants of the rebels were in the building in Moore Street. Unless they had "Star Trek" facilities, they did not beam up out of the GPO and end up in this building on Moore Street. They obviously had to make their way along these back alleys and laneways, that are still there, which were very fraught with danger. They had no idea what they were going to run into. That would be a good example of a historical landscape, just like a battlefield, such as the one at Aughrim, where all the various forces were aligned and who moved where. On the Moore Street site the Deputy specifically raised, the interconnectivity between the GPO and Moore Street is part of the battlefield landscape and to exclude the laneways means asking how the hell they got from A to B, or A to C in this case, B being the laneways. In a case like that, the historical landscape includes the routes they took between the GPO and Moore Street.

On signage along the route, the laneways still have a bearing. I know them well and they are well known short-cuts on the northside.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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My question was not on the signage at Moore Street but that on national monuments-----

Dr. Mark Clinton:

I beg your pardon.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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-----just so people do not have that defence of ignorance.

Dr. Mark Clinton:

That is why our related point is that we are advocating for monument destruction prevention rather than, as the Deputy said, when the deed is done. As we know, technology has made leaps and bounds and the data allows us to look up who owns what field.

It would be a laborious but one-off operation to work out where the known monuments are. As the register is to be updated, let us start with the updated register and seek to identify where the monuments are and on whose land they are situated. The Land Registry Office could then issue to the landowners a short and concise note informing them that they have a ringfort or a megalithic tomb on their land, telling them a little about it, that it is a legally protected structure and what they should do if they propose to sell the land. There have been examples of where land was sold and the new owner has pleaded that he or she did not know anything about the structure. Everybody who has a monument on his or her land needs to be notified of its existence and given information about it. Where a ringfort is demolished, there are subterranean features and objects within the trenches that enjoy their own legal protection under the National Monuments Acts. A preservation order placed on the land where the monument once stood removes the motivation, people are aware of its existence, they know what it is, that it may not be damaged and that if damaged there will be no gain in it. In doing this, the destruction of monuments would reduce to such a level we would never have to discuss the issue again.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I thank Dr. Clinton. One or two questions were not answered but we can come back to them later. I call Senator Cummins.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for their attendance this afternoon. It is much appreciated. This is important legislation, which I broadly support. It seeks to provide legal protections for newly discovered archaeological sites, to establish a single register of monuments, to provide a clear statutory basis for the Commissioner of Public Works or relevant local authorities to manage monuments and to establish a clear basis for the Minister for the local authority for legal title and ownership for the guardianship of monuments. As currently drafted, the legislation allows for things to fall between two stools and for ambiguity. This is important, encompassing legislation.

I come from a very archaeologically rich city, Waterford. I understand the need to protect, record, report and display our rich archaeological heritage. There are fantastic examples of this in my own city. The Medieval Museum encases undercrofts within a modern structure, but this was done in such a sensitive way by the local authority that it has future-proofed the security of that for many generations to come. However, a balance has always to be struck. In many cases, there is a perceived lack of a pragmatic approach, in particular, to buildings, whereby the demands that are placed on the owners of a property in terms of, as mentioned by Deputy Ó Snodaigh, the costs involved are such that they result in buildings becoming vacant, derelict and ruins, rather than a pragmatic approach to saving a building with some modification that allows it to be preserved for future generations. I would welcome the views of An Taisce with regard to that balance of demands. Unfortunately, at times because the view is taken that it must be done in a such a strict manner, the costs are so prohibitive that ultimately it results in the loss of the building for future generations.

I am sure the witnesses are familiar with section 57 of the Planning and Development Act 2000, which allows for the owner or occupier of a protected structure to apply to the planning authority for a declaration as to the type of works it considers would or would not materially affect the character of the structure or any element of it. There are considerable delays within local authorities with regard to applications that are made under section 57. Is there benefit in exploring the possibility of a suitably qualified person, such as a graded conservation architect, being permitted to sign-off on works in consultation with the conservation architect within the local authority in order to speed up the process? I am not suggesting that anything should be discarded but that we seek to streamline the process in the context of body of work currently under way in regard to dereliction and vacancy and bringing buildings back into productive use. I would welcome the witnesses' views.

Mr. Ian Lumley:

Like the Senator, I am pleased to say I am from Waterford city. As he rightly said, Waterford city has set a national example in the care of its heritage, the management of archaeology, The Viking Triangle and in the development of the city as a major cultural centre. An impressive number of beautiful museums have been developed in Waterford, which tell the story from prehistoric material to the Vikings, the Anglo-Normans and, moving into the 18th century, the specialist collections of silver and clocks. It is a model that other European cities far larger than Waterford could not remotely match.

In our detailed submission, we have highlighted the challenges that arise for a landowner with a ruinous masonry structure, such as the remnant of a medieval castle, where mortar is exposed to wind and weathering and the building of the ruin may often be just part of the original structure, the survival of which in many cases represents quite a challenge for the landowner or property owner. Support needs to be given in those circumstances.

The wider issues raised by Senator Cummins relate more to the buildings that would be deemed to be protected structures under the Planning and Development Act 2000.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I appreciate that. I am just asking for the views of An Taisce.

Mr. Ian Lumley:

We agree with the Senator that a great deal could be done. I was a member of the Heritage Council for a number of years. The resourcing of local authority conservation officers is important. Having employed in all of the local authority areas a well-informed conservation officer employed who can deal promptly with property owners, architects and others doing building works on protected structures is very important. That resolves issues. A great deal can be done by way of discussion that can avoid delays in the planning process. The Senator's suggestion that the determination as to whether work can or cannot be done on a building without going through the process of section 57 determinations is a useful one. Section 57 is a very useful part of the legislation. It means that a determination can be issued that works such as re-roofing or other structural repairs can be carried out without the requirement to go through the planning process. That also creates transparency and there is a public record of that. I would have some reservations in regard to the conservation officer or architect for the local authority and the architect for a property owner being able to do things internally. That certainly is something that would-----

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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An Taisce would have a difficulty with that.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I apologise for interrupting, but I must advise members that if they spend four or five minutes asking questions it does not leave enough time for the witnesses to give a substantial answer. If members would stick to direct questions, we would get through a lot more. Time permitting, we will have a second round and we can go into the issues in more detail. I ask members to try to assist me in this regard. I am monitoring the clock. Senator Cummins took four minutes to ask his questions, which left only three minutes for Mr. Lumley to answer. The next slot is mine, so I will try to set the example.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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Could that be responded to in writing?

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Absolutely, but I think we will have time. I can bring the Senator back in later and we can deal with it.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Chairman for that.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I accept these are all important questions. Could I bring Dr. Greene in on that point? Having visited Waterford and Kilkenny, those two cities, to my eye, have preserved well many of their archeological and heritage aspects. I know very little about this. I have no expertise in this area. To my uninformed eye, this looks good. How does the preservation of a site or artefact and constructing around it, in a sympathetic manner, fit in with the Valletta principles in terms of preserving the landscape around it? How do we get to a position where we get that balance right?

Dr. Sharon Greene:

That is a very good question. I am not sure I am the best qualified to answer it. It is certainly an issue, not only with in urban environments but also in rural sites, as was mentioned and described earlier. It is a difficult question and I am not sure exactly where the answer lies. Perhaps my colleagues could address it.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Does Mr. Lumley from An Taisce or Dr. Johnson want to come in on that point? Heads 8 and 9 were referred to. Public knowledge and understanding of these sites will help us preserve them together with an understanding of why we need to protect them without having to rely on penalties or charging people. How do we preserve, protect and not damage the integrity of sites but maintain interest in them?

Mr. Ian Lumley:

A very good scheme was adopted by the Heritage Council, which I could not commend highly enough. Only yesterday I signed a-----

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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What is the name of the scheme?

Mr. Ian Lumley:

It is the adopt a monument scheme. Under the scheme the wider local community, including the schools in the area, through engagement with the property owner, if it is privately owned, can arrange visits, assist in conservation work and formal apply for funding towards conservation work in terms of protecting and enhancing the monument. It means the burden of having a monument on one's land becomes a privilege if one is working with a local community on its care. It is a positive project and I could not commend highly enough that it be emulated nationally. An Taisce, through its membership, promotes active interest in monuments and appreciation of heritage. We are about to host a webinar on Waterford city to highlight to people nationally the example that city has set in urban archeological heritage in the presentation of monuments.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I thank Mr. Lumley for that. Dr. Johnson indicated she would like to come in on this point.

Dr. Ruth Johnson:

The Chairman asked about how to integrate archeological monuments in places into urban settings. My response to that would be in terms of place-making and forward planning. It is all grounded in baseline data initially and really understanding the place. Master plans and forward planning need to robust and well researched, employing all the best practice, mapping, place-making and layering of information to understand what is significant about a place, what the vulnerabilities are and then trying that to work that into the design for a development of place, whether that is place-making in the urban realm or development of the new buildings in an archeological environment.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I thank Dr. Johnson for that. Mr. Swan indicated he would like to come in on that.

Mr. Rónán Swan:

Heads 8 and 9 are particularly important. A crucial element is the requirement for people to report a prescribed monument. In essence, I would want to explore how that will work in practice. The principle of where researchers or archeologists carrying out development works or scoping works for Eir, etc. will provide an option to identify a large range of monuments. If we can capture those monuments and sites, from a development point of view, those may be considered as constraints we are trying to avoid in the course of the design of our cities. Capturing those monuments at the outset will be important as it will inform research for future design and make people aware of the monuments in their locality. Currently, we do not have a system where monuments can be easily updated and in that way inform future developments. If we can get that right in this Bill, it would be a major achievement.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Where somebody discovers a monument or something of interest, who makes the ultimate decision whether that is to be preserved on site, by record or taken away and-----

Mr. Rónán Swan:

If we identify sites under an environmental impact assessment in the course of works we are doing, that is presented to the board and we put in place our mitigations and, in some cases, many sites will have been avoided and, therefore, they are preserved by avoidance. There will be a subset of sites which we will recommend for preservation in situand a subset of sites which will be recommended for preservation by record. Those are sites which we know about in advance. I stress they can be either designated or undesignated sites and they can be sites related to archaeology, architectural heritage or cultural heritage in general. They need not be put in as being a record of monuments and places, RMP, or a record of protected structures, MPS. We can take on board a wide range of them. Once we identify those sites, we would move on to the construction of a scheme and carry out advanced works. To pick up on a earlier point of how we address sites in the areas between sites, in our work we assess 12.5% plus of a scheme. We do a great deal of additional works through survey work, LiDAR technology, trenching and investigation test exhibition to identify as many sites as possible and that helps us inform risk. We often do these works under ministerial direction or with respect to an archeological strategy and we provide that to the Minister, and, ultimately, it would come under an approved road scheme. It is the Minister who will decide whether we should proceed with such developments.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I will have to interrupt Mr. Swan as we are over the allocated seven minutes. I note Dr. Clinton also wanted to come in on that point. I hope we can return to it in a later round of questions. I cannot continue on it now as I must bring in Senator Boyhan.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I will follow on from that point. I want to direct all my questions to Dr. Clinton. I welcome all our guests. I read all the submissions and they are excellent. I have got a very positive vibe frorm them. I soldiered with Dr. Clinton on an issue related to Carrickmines Castle a long time ago, therefore, I know of his work and expertise in this area. I want to pick out a number of questions, technically, posed in An Taisce’s collective submission. How can it be appropriate for a Minister - it ties in with what he was about to say - who has granted an excavation licence on strict archeological conditions to be the authority that can subsequently issue the destruction order for the same monument, in direct contravention of the terms of the original licence? That is taken word for word from the An Taisce's submission. It is an important point. I have serious concerns about the powers of a Minister with responsibility for heritage or any other Minister. I want to clearly state I am not directing that comment at the current Minister as we have a really good committed Minister on the job at the moment, but we do not know who will be coming down the line. I say it in a measured way. I have thought about it. I pay tribute to the current Minister and I do not doubt his commitment. An Taisce's submission goes on to state: "How can it be acceptable that there is no cultural-heritage court of appeal or [cultural] ombudsman to adjudicate on the fate of disputed sites and monuments off note?" That is a good point and one on which I will ask the committee to consider making a strong recommendation. The submission also comments on the value of having the input of an appropriate and qualified advisory council. That is an excellent idea and one I would fully support.

We all know about the Valletta Convention and I will not go into the detail of it. We know its importance and significance. I would suggest an acknowledgement in the Long Title of the Bill with respect to the Valletta Convention would cover us. I would like to hear Dr. Clinton's view on that. I think it is an important aspect.

An Taisce, in its submission, also raised a concern about archaeologists working in the private sector and conflicts of interest with respect to developers, etc, and that is a very valid one.

First, they are not in a position to rule in favour or against their paymaster. If one is an archaeologist employed by a massive developer that wants to carry out some destruction, there is a conflict of interest. I am not saying all developers do or seek to do that. I am just saying there are cases where it happens. The witnesses say that a National Monuments Service and National Museum of Ireland-employed or accredited archaeologist answering to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage or the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media is important.

In summary, the Valletta Convention is critically important. Regarding reactivating the monuments advisory council, the witnesses make three good sharp and concise asks, which I acknowledge. I am directing my questions to An Taisce because I know its vast experience in this area. This relates specifically to issues it posed in its submission to us today. I thank everybody who made submissions. I am generally supportive of this piece of legislation.

Dr. Mark Clinton:

I could not agree more. We are very fortunate to have a very interested and committed Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage at this point in time. It is such a relief. In my tenure, I think I have fielded against seven Ministers. Theoretically, the Minister with responsibility for heritage, however it is designated at the time, has this brief and responsibility but the differences between the seven were notable. Right now, we have a good Minister. We are all afraid of what is coming next. One hopes for the best.

I think we covered the Valletta convention well. It is a great agreement. I have been reading it for years. When Ireland ratified, I had been waiting for the opportunity. We have been waiting for the Bill to finally arrive. I was amazed when I read the heads. The convention is there, which is excellent, but where is its friend? Where is the Valletta Convention? Anyone who reads it will see how good it is. It addresses points raised by Deputy Ó Snodaigh earlier about landscape and the context, as Mr. Lumley said. Dr. Greene referenced the dry summer. Suddenly one realises that the monument over there and this one here are actually connected but it takes a lot of detailed study, analysis and expert input. One can gather the data but then it is a question of who quantifies and qualifies it. Archaeology is like a running gag. If one does not know the answer to the question, one just says "not my period" but within the joke, there is the truth.

I would like to think I know a lot about certain aspects of archaeology but I do not know that much about things like wedge tombs. I certainly would not be qualified to give a lecture on one. Therefore, we must draw on as many experts as possible. If experts are out there, we should use them. We certainly saw that when the Irish economy was under threat. The late lamented former Minister, Brian Lenihan, consulted and availed of the expertise of anyone he thought had a valuable input that could come to the rescue of the State. We have all these serious archaeologists in the universities etc. outside of the public service. We must draw on their knowledge otherwise what are we doing - ignoring it? Having a degree in archaeology is only a starting point. One then has to specialise. Specialising gives one the authority on that subject.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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What about the power of the Minister and how An Taisce thinks we can address it because I do not think any Minister should have all that power?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

I do not think the Minister should have all that power - even if we are talking about a good Minister.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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What is the alternative?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

It could be the advisory councils, which we once had and let slip. Northern Ireland has one. Otherwise we could go the parallel route with a companion ombudsman to go with An Coimisinéir Teanga - An Coimisinéir Dúchas - so we would handle and protect the two pillars of Irish culture - the language and its traditions contained therein and the physical manifestations of the monuments in the field.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Two things struck me from reading An Taisce's submission. The first is the survey showing that 34% of the State's archaeological monuments have been destroyed since 1840. That is very stark. The destruction is continuing at an alarming rate. Since 2007, only nine prosecutions have been taken by the DPP on the recommendations of An Garda Síochána for alleged offences under the National Monuments Act. What are the views of An Taisce regarding the heads of this Bill and ignorance as a defence? Is it aware of any other jurisdictions where this is the case? How does that compare in terms of international best practice in valuing archaeology and monuments?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

It varies so much from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. We can pat ourselves on the back. Metal detectors are verbotenhere, we are pretty good at it and An Garda Síochána will pursue it whereas in England, one will often see programmes stating "valuable Saxon coin hoard found by somebody". Of course, the object is important in its own right but it is also about the context. If one finds something wonderful on an excavation, one does not just put it in a box and say "we found this on site." One would be fired in the morning. One would be asked where it came from and whether it came from feature A or feature B. One will often date a monument by an associated object. In other words, we are better than some-----

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Sorry to interrupt. What is Dr. Clinton's view on ignorance as a defence?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

I think that defence is crazy - saying "Sorry guv, I didn't know it was a monument". That has been tried a few times. This is why we were stressing that monument destruction prevention is the road to take. When the register is updated, one should get out one's data file and let everybody know that one has got one, what it is, how important it is, that it is protected and that if it is demolished in any way, the ground it formerly stood on is subject to a preservation order so, therefore, there is no gain in destroying a monument. One cannot do it out of ignorance and one cannot do it for gain so the monument is safe. Forget all these prosecutions because I see the Bill allows for fines of up to €1 million. It is some astronomical figure. Who will be able to pay that? What are we going to do - confiscate the farm? It is about preventing destruction rather than acting after the fact.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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At last week's session, when I raised the Valletta Convention, I was told there was no need to put it into the Bill, we did not have to put it into legislation because all our legislation was compliant with it anyway and we could name it in the Long Title of the Bill and this would be more than sufficient. What is An Taisce's view on that?

Mr. Ian Lumley:

When we were exercised by the Granada Convention on architectural heritage in the late 1990s, very explicit consideration was given to incorporating its principles into the legislation for protected structures. There is no evidence the same process is in place regarding this legislation. Despite the long-standing concern that has been raised about the focus of our system of protection, particularly in the planning system when the development and impact of a site is evaluated, it is very narrowly focused on the site and there is no proper consideration of the relationship of that one monument to the wider site, a complex or its landscape setting. Those are very explicit provisions in the Valletta Convention and that is a serious weakness in the legislation that needs to be addressed.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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It was suggested last week that for checks and balances or to get outside expertise, we would not need an advisory council but that the Heritage Council could be used instead. What is An Taisce's view on that? Would the Heritage Council be sufficient to get the expertise referred to by Dr. Clinton?

It is a very valid point. If people have expertise, they should use it. Is the Heritage Council good enough or do we need an advisory council?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

The Heritage Council does excellent work but it is not quite what this requires. Senator Fitzpatrick asked earlier about composition. In the original advisory council, for example, we had representatives from the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland and the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, which are just three examples. The Minister would not be appointing this advisory council and, in other words, the Royal Irish Academy would decide who should represent it, the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland would decide, and so on, and we would have an independent advisory council representing the objectives of their own base camp. As such, it would be truly independent, without conflicts of interest. Taking a leaf out of the 1930 Act, as amended in the 1954 Act, and the relevant sections such as section 21, that is a good starting point. Those are three obvious members of the advisory council.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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It is Dr. Clinton's view that without an advisory council specifically on this, we would not get that expertise. Is that the point?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

If we are looking for the top guns in Irish archaeology, we will find them in the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. They are the recognised bodies and it is up to them to say, for example, that for this new monument that seems to be very important, "To this meeting, we are sending Professor whoever". If it is prehistoric, they could send someone like Professor Emeritus John Waddell or Professor William O'Brien of UCC, but it would depend on the monument. These organisations could send along totally independent experts on the particular monument, so it can be monument-specific. In this day and age, of course, there should be other bodies on it, but only so long as they are independent, with no conflicting interests and a recognised expertise in that field.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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An important follow-on question that we might come back to is how often that advisory council would be called on each year. In Dr. Clinton's experience, how busy would they be and how well resourced would they have to be? We will come back to that question at the end. I call Senator Moynihan.

Rebecca Moynihan (Labour)
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I did not realise we could be in the committee room again this week so I apologise for attending via video link.

I have several questions. I want to focus on the definition of a national monument and this question is specifically for An Taisce. Does An Taisce think the definition is broad enough to incorporate more recent national monuments in order to protect both heritage and built heritage for future generations? It is something we might not consider to be particularly special but future generations might. I am going through the list of national monuments in Dublin, and I note Deputy Ó Snodaigh’s presence and his long campaign to have Moore Street designated as a national monument. My question is specifically around the designation of a national monument and whether An Taisce has any suggestions about how to broaden that.

My second question is not directly related and I am going to relay some of my own experience of trying to get things onto the record of protected structures. I imagine An Taisce runs into the same difficulties when it comes to national monuments. One example was in regard to a building which is part of our industrial heritage, which Ireland does not have lot of, and that is the Player Wills building in Dublin 8. The first line that came from developers was that it is not an important building, it is not architecturally significant and it did not need to be put on the record of protected structures. Of course, the developer paid for a developer's report and the developer’s report came back and said that, no, it had no architectural significance. It was very difficult for me to push the local authority to do its own conservation report on it when the developer was not letting the local authority onto the site.

When it comes to problems and issues like that with regard to national monuments, what are the suggestions of An Taisce? How could this Bill be amended so it is almost taken out of the hands of a local authority, for example, if it does not want to add anything because it sees it is impacting on an infrastructure project, or if the developer does not want to act? How could this Bill be strengthened so that places that should go on the record do go on the record?

Does the Local Authority Archaeologists Network think the local authorities are sufficiently supported and staffed to take on the amount of current work in terms of national monuments or heritage protection?

I will leave it at that. There is a lot in those questions but if I have some further time, the Chair can come back to me.

Dr. Mark Clinton:

I will give a brief starter, although Dr. Johnson would be able to answer on much of what the Senator raised. As things stand, although I believe the terminology is about to be altered, to qualify as a national monument there are five alternative criteria, including archaeological, architectural and historical. As such, the definition was quite good, but as to getting into the specifics, I will ask Dr. Johnson to come in.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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We might bring in Dr. Johnson on the local authority resources aspect as well.

Dr. Ruth Johnson:

In regard to the local authority resourcing, unlike heritage officers, of whom there are 31 across all of the local authorities, which is fantastic, at this point in time seven local authorities have archaeological officers. They are engaged in different kinds of work, such as providing professional advice and expertise to the executive and councillors. In the meeting on 27 January, the Minister and the Chairman both expressed an interest in seeing more officers in local authorities across the country to supplement the work of conservation officers and heritage officers, and supplement that expertise across the board.

Our members do different kinds of work. Most of us are engaged in planning and development advice to local authorities and we work between the Planning and Development Act, with cognisance of the National Monuments Act, and the record of protected structures, the national inventory of architectural heritage and the other inventories that are applicable. We find that some types of monuments or features fall between legislative stools. For instance, our industrial heritage was raised by Senator Moynihan. It is our experience across the board of the network that this is a problem we would like to see addressed in this new Bill, if possible.

In terms of the definition of a monument, the current definition is broad but there is a lot of confusion on the current legislation among members of the public as to what is a national monument, what is a recorded monument, what is a registered monument and so on. We welcome the clarity in the new Bill but we have a lot of questions about the new terminology that is being introduced. Hopefully, that answers the question.

Rebecca Moynihan (Labour)
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Yes, it does. I thank Dr. Johnson. One of the areas that is overlooked is our industrial heritage. When we look at heritage, we often focus on older sites, but to protect our industrial heritage for future generations is important.

I have a further question for the local authorities on the provisions around metal detectors. Is there a huge incidence of people using metal detectors and disturbing sites? I know there is provision in the Bill for that. Perhaps one of the witnesses would like to give some background on that. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend last week and it was probably more appropriate at that time.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I call Dr. Greene.

Dr. Sharon Greene:

I can only speak anecdotally from my interactions with the public, with our readers and contributors and with people in the various organisations. Yes, it is a growing problem at the moment. Despite the fact some people are aware they should not be doing it without a licence, there are also people who are interpreting the current national monuments legislation to their own benefit and misunderstanding it.

Therefore, yes, it is a problem.

Rebecca Moynihan (Labour)
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Perfect. I thank Dr. Greene. That is interesting because I would not have known that.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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To follow up on that very briefly, under what legislation is a licence required to operate a metal detector?

Dr. Sharon Greene:

It is under the National Monuments Acts.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Thank you. We can move on. Does Senator Cummins wish to take the slot?

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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Is Senator Seery Kearney or Deputy Higgins here?

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I cannot see the board clearly from here. Senator Cummins can take it if he wishes to.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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That is fine. I will not take the full time, but I want to tease out the question I asked in the first round on the opinion on section 57. I think Dr. Clinton previously used the words "conflict of interest" in response to another question. I suggested that a suitably qualified graded conservation architect could sign off on such works under section 57. Is there an inherent suggestion in what has been said in response to other questions that we would doubt the bona fides of a qualified graded conservation architect, depending on who is paying the individual?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

Dr. Johnson discussed that in relation to county officers. Is Dr. Johnson there? Does she wish to come in? As opposed to one person being responsible for the whole thing, from natural to archaeological to architectural, etc., we need more of a team in these different areas and different authorities. I think it was Dr. Johnson who suggested that. Am I correct in that, Dr. Johnson?

Dr. Ruth Johnson:

If I am taking this up correctly, is the question on a privately engaged consultant making recommendations on a protected structure or recorded monument?

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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Yes. I am going wider and I appreciate that. However, it is relevant to the work we are doing as a committee on dereliction and vacancy. Yes, under section 57 of the Planning and Development Act, it provides for that with approval of the local authority, obviously, with the architect. At the moment, as Dr. Johnson well knows, there is under-resourcing in that space, which causes lengthy delays. The benefits of going that route versus a planning application that has statutory timelines built into it is not beneficial.

As Dr. Johnson knows, this is the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage and we are trying to speed up the delivery of units. I am looking at avenues whereby we can ensure the structure, integrity and protection of the a building's heritage while also trying to speed up that delivery. I believe there is an avenue there for oversight by a registered conservation graded architect to do that work. It would, obviously, have to be approved finally by the local authority conservation officer. What is the view on that?

Mr. Ian Lumley:

Senator Cummins correctly highlighted that it is a resource issue. It varies dramatically between different local authorities. In other words, if there is well resourced administration support and professional advice accessible to a local authority in terms of a conservation officer or a consultant conservation architect, it can respond quickly. The answer to the concerns that the Senator raised, and this applies to other arenas of the public administrative process, is that things are done efficiently and expeditiously. We would all agree with that.

Section 57 relates to protected structures. We all have a huge concern about the level of dereliction in towns and villages and, indeed, rural dereliction. There are so many abandoned houses and old mill buildings and such. However, the overwhelming majority of derelict or unutilised buildings are not protected structures. Therefore, protected structure legislation is not a major factor.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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In the case where it is, are we suggesting that just because a graded conservation architect is being paid for by the owner of the property, he or she could not do an adequate and sufficient job to oversee such works? Does Mr. Lumley not believe that would be appropriate, given the resources constraints that are there? We have to acknowledge that it is all well and good to present the utopian view that we should have X, Y and Z. However, given the constraints that we have, is this not an avenue that we can use in order to try to speed up delivery while also being cognisant and mindful of protecting the integrity of the structure?

Mr. Ian Lumley:

I would reiterate that the first course should be to ensure that the process is expeditious.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I do not know if I will get an answer to the question.

Mr. Ian Lumley:

There is a conservation architect involved in any case.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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We are on the monuments and archaeological heritage Bill.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I appreciate that I have gone wider. However, it has a bearing and we have An Taisce before us here.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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It is only fair that we stick to the Bill that we are discussing. It is a point for further discussion.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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If I am not going to get an answer, that is fine. I appreciate it.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I am sure you probably will get an answer.

Mr. Ian Lumley:

It raises a concern due to a lack of transparency. The issue is there is not a public record of communications between the conservation architect and the conservation officer or architect, or whoever it is who is representing the council. There is then the issue of the letters that are all in a file, meaning that if somebody is looking at planning a file for building, if a new property owner becomes involved, if the building changes hands and if there is a sale, that everything that has been to the building is transparent. That is another very important consideration.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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If we took it a step further and we opened up the transparency of that dialogue between both, would that address some of the concerns Mr. Lumley has?

Mr. Ian Lumley:

There would have to be transparency. The idea that a consultant representing the property owner would unilaterally, without any-----

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I feel-----

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Let us bring this to a conclusion.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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There may be an ongoing issue regardless of what suggestion is made.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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There is considerable media interest in the review of the planning system and we might have a look at that under that process. This committee would be dealing with that.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Chair.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I apologise to Dr. Johnson and Mr. Swan, as they had their hands up for both of those questions. I will try to bring them back in to answer at a later stage. I will move now to the Sinn Féin slot. I call Deputy Gould.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I will go off on something different. We are talking about heritage. I live in Cork and perhaps the witnesses can comment on a situation with one of the main streets on the north side of Cork city centre, namely MacCurtain Street. It was named after Tomás Mac Curtain, who was a former Lord Mayor of Cork and was murdered in his home in March 1920 by the Black and Tans and British soldiers. Cork renamed the street after him. Then, a number of years ago, a group of businesspeople carried out a survey to see how they could get people to come to this street. The English company they employed suggested to rename and re-market the area as the Victorian quarter.

They did that but they did not get it passed by Cork City Council. It has not been passed by the people of Cork. Not all of the traders in the area agree with it. It is an unbelievable insult to the memory of Tomás Mac Curtain and his family.

It is on Google Maps and Tripadvisor and in Cork City Council and in the media. It is everywhere. Can just a couple of people come together and rename part of a city? This is part of the second city in this State. These people have done this with no oversight.

I have contacted Google but I cannot get an answer. I have contacted other people. This should not be up anywhere. It was never passed and it was never agreed.

I have raised this in Cork City Council and I have not been the only one to do so. From a heritage point of view, what can be done to stop things like that from happening? There might be some buildings in the Victorian quarter but the other thing is that she was the Famine queen. We cannot do anything about existing streets that might carry English names on them but we certainly should not be naming any more streets or areas after people like the Famine queen.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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It is a reserve function of local authorities. If that is under the Local Government Act 2001 then is it relevant to this Bill?

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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My point is whether it should be in the Bill or not because I have been raising this in Cork City Council for a number of years and I have been getting nowhere. What rights do individuals have to make these decisions for people? As far as I am concerned they do not have the right to do it and they should have been taken to task for it. I was listening to some of the earlier contributions when recourse to action was mentioned. Can we get these people to cease and desist? Is there something in place for that in this Bill and if there is not, should a section be put into this Bill to protect people and places from this happening?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

I would agree. In a rural context, when an area has a name that has been long-standing and everyone associates themselves with that place, to come along and change it arbitrarily seems unacceptable because it is going against the history and tradition of the place. Hence, we have ludicrous names like “Tuscany Avenue” where it becomes surrealistic. I would have thought Cork City Council would have to authorise these things.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I do not know. I thought it was a reserve function of the local council.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I brought it up a number of times in the council because it has named an area and because it is not a specific street. There should be some recourse to get someone to stop. I have written to the Department and the council to say there should be no documentation with that name on it. I will again take it up with them.

There is one other issue I wanted to raise to see if it might be included in this Bill. Last year a motion was put forward in Cork City Council by Sinn Féin councillors to rename Anglesea Street, where Cork City Council is, to MacSwiney Street, after the other Lord Mayor of Cork, who died in Brixton Prison in October 1920 on hunger strike. It was passed and it was to be done but I heard from councillors yesterday in Cork about it. They told me it is straightforward to name a new street or area but it is not straightforward to change a street name. Cork City Council is saying the existing legislation is so old and archaic that it is not able to do it. Should there be a provision in this Bill for local authorities and county councils to rename areas if it is the wish of that local authority or of the people of the area, providing it is passed at a meeting?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

There is the folklore department in University College Dublin and all of that. Great study has been done on placenames and there is a record of placenames that are historic and all the rest of it. It could be done. For example, to take it into an archaeological zone it would be like proposing to rename Newgrange. That would be a bit bizarre and nobody would accept it but it would not be possible to get away with that. That is the name that is on the Ordnance Survey Ireland map, it is in all the Irish Folklore Commission documents, it is in the Ordnance Survey name books and it is in all the data from John O’Donovan and others who went around the country gathering all these placenames and old names of streets. There is that body of information and maybe the Bill could say that placenames should have some resonance in history and heritage.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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This Bill is being brought forward and there is an old and archaic Act in place. It is a small anomaly but it happens from time to time. Surely this Bill provides us with an opportunity to rectify this. We are not talking about a substantial change but about repairing a problem that is there already. If a local authority with 31 councillors votes to rename a street, they are elected so they have a democratic right to do something like that and that should be possible. We should not be getting letters from officials saying the legislation is old and archaic.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Which legislation were they referring to?

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I do not have that information with me. The council wrote to the councillors saying there is a time constraint and that if it is not done by March then it falls. This is a local authority that voted democratically to change something so an Act should not be blocking that. If there is, maybe we can put forward an amendment that would tidy it up.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I ask the Deputy to find out what that legislation is and we will see if there is an opportunity to do that through this Bill or through another course.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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It is an archaic measure. As far as I remember, three fifths of the ratepayers are required to make a change and there are no ratepayers anymore so it is virtually impossible to change the name of streets here in the city. There is an element of this that falls within the heritage brief so it is something we can look at. I do not know which Act it is.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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We will try to find out what Act it is. If the Deputies can come back with that information we will see if there is a way we could look at, either through this Bill or another vehicle. It sounds frustrating.

I will move on to the second Green Party slot, which I will take. The following are questions on the Bill I discussed with Deputy Duffy during the week. Dr. Johnson has covered the resources and the committee has a wide remit on planning issues, water management and everything that goes through here. Are there sufficient resources at local authority level and at planning level, etc.? Dr. Johnson said that seven local authorities have an archaeological officer. How is that decision made? Is it relative? Does it make it easier to get an archaeological officer if the county is well-endowed with archaeological sites or is it a chief executive’s decision based on staffing levels? How did these seven local authorities get lucky enough to have archaeological officers?

Dr. Ruth Johnson:

In the case of my local authority, Dublin City Council, the first city archaeologist was appointed in the early 1990s and that was a result of the Woodquay excavations and public outcry on same. It was copper-fastened then by the Valletta Convention and the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 1994 that followed. That provided a platform and the councillors and executives understood the need to have professional and in-house archaeological advice within the organisation. Since 2018, we have two officers working in Dublin City Council. It is a big development area as well and we are engaged in different types of archaeological advice and activities within that local authority.

Cork is another city that has had long-standing archaeological advice and expertise. I do not know the exact ins and outs of how that came about to be honest. Mayo County Council has five archaeologists working for it at present and their appointment came about through the road's schemes. It was a peculiar and unusual arrangement but it is lucky to have a team of five archaeologists and they work in different areas of the local authority.

Some of them carry out archaeologically licensed activities on behalf of the local authority and others have engaged in planning and other internal advice and project management. In Limerick, one is based in the roads office. To answer the question, it is currently at the discretion of each local authority and its chief executive, depending on staffing levels.

There would be a good argument for a full suite of heritage professionals to work alongside conservation officers, who are supported in the Bill, and the heritage officers, who are supported by the Heritage Council, and to have local authority archaeological expertise to advise on planning and development. In local authorities where there are local authority archaeologists in place, the National Monuments Service often leaves the planning to us, for the most part. It would be quite a busy role given that we also carry out advice for local authority development. The planning authorities are also sometimes the developer. We are also sometimes a heritage resource manager. We have accrued new roles in some cases, such as the community monument fund, which we have been delighted to see in place for the past two years. That is the situation.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I thank Dr. Johnson. I would add that county architects should be added to that list of officers we have in local authorities at every opportunity. I would like to see a county architect in every local authority.

Deputy Duffy discussed with me questions about UNESCO sites. Are UNESCO sites, their management and protection, covered in this Bill?

Mr. Ian Lumley:

UNESCO sites overlap with other designations. The two UNESCO world heritage sites we have, Brú na Bóinne and Great Skellig, would come under archaeological protection. There is an obligation when signing the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, which designates world heritage sites, that there be a periodically reviewed management plan for world heritage sites which meets certain standards. There was a consultation process for the Skelligs world heritage site process and we weighed a submission on that within the past year. Those standards are progressively being developed.

One of the big challenges in world heritage sites is managing visitor numbers. If one thinks of places such as Machu Picchu in Peru, the big challenge for world heritage sites is that the visitor pressure can have an adverse impact on the site and affect the integrity and wear and tear on the site. That is a major consideration for the management of world heritage sites. There is a parallel regime.

The real question we need to ask about world heritage sites in Ireland is why we have been such laggards in advancing additional designations. There is the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland and we have our two sites. Other European countries have been progressively advancing nominations. While there are many candidates and there have been consultation processes going on for the past 20 years that I can remember, there just does not seem to be the will to push them. World heritage sites have moved from the original concept of having a single, very clearly defined site, such as Stonehenge, to having groups of monuments of a particular type in a wider geographical area. It has been argued, for instance, that the key Irish early Christian monastic sites could be designated as a group. It has been very disappointing that we have not seen any advance in further world heritage site nominations by Ireland.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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A series of hill forts at Kilranelagh in Wicklow has been recommended to me as being potentially at the UNESCO level. I would like to talk to our guests about that at another stage. I think there is a planning application in train at the moment so I do not want to discuss it now.

Dr. Mark Clinton:

I served as a deputy to the late, great Professor Barry Raftery, who was the hill fort expert. He excavated Rathgall in east Wicklow. He used to bring us touring around all these places. You could tell he was the non-smoker because he would jog up hills while some of us needed ambulance lifting. The Chairman is referring to a unique site with seven hilltops, focused on Baltinglass. There are seven hill forts on seven hills. Obviously, there is an interrelationship and interaction between them. They are not all on top of small mountains, if you like. There is an interrelationship. To build anything on top of any of them would be ridiculous. To put it in context, there are only approximately 100 hill forts known in Ireland, at the last count. Dr. Greene might tell me if that is right. For seven out of 100 to be in a neat little cluster is astonishing. Some of them, such as the one in Baltinglass itself, are spectacular. It is a damn fine suggestion that the hill fort cluster of Baltinglass deserves world heritage status.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I would like to discuss that with our guests in more detail another time but I will not go into detail on it today.

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I thank our guests. I apologise for missing the start of this meeting as I had another committee meeting to attend simultaneously, as is often the case, unfortunately. I have read through the opening statements and it is good to get so many expert views on this issue. I particularly loved Dr. Greene's idea about a communications campaign relating to the register. I note there is provision for the promotion of public awareness of the register in the Bill. I would love to hear her idea of how we could bring that to life.

I thought Mr. Swan's proposal for secondary legislation was interesting. That legislation would allow for the full implementation of the Part 7 licences. I am keen to learn a little more about that.

I thought the advisory council Mr. Lumley suggested was a particularly interesting idea. I am not sure how it would work, who would sit on it or what its remit would be. I would be interested to learn a little more about that proposal.

Dr. Sharon Greene:

I thank the Deputy for her question. I am pleased to talk about this. It also ties in with the whole question of monument protection and questions that were asked earlier by Deputies Ó Snodaigh and Cian O'Callaghan. There have already been opportunities to make people aware of the registers that are in existence and I spoke about those in my statement in 2018, with all the publicity about new sites, crop marks and that sort of thing. We tend to have to wait for those opportunities for us to be in the news to promote these things. We know from these particular cases that when we have the opportunity to tell members of the public to look at this wonderful stuff and show them how we report it and where they can find information about it, they react. They go, report more and explore their landscapes, as we saw in recent years during the pandemic. This is incredibly important. It ties into what was said earlier about raising awareness of archaeological sites for their protection in the landscape.

It is important that we let landowners know what is on their lands. It is very easy to say ignorance is not a defence when it comes to destruction and damage, and that is absolutely the case, but in some cases it is a fact that the landowners do not know what they have. I have been listening to these discussions and the urban landscape has been to the fore. However, a considerable amount of our archaeological record is in the rural landscape and not all landowners are aware of what they have on their land or what it means. One way to raise awareness of the register and awareness of our archaeology, as I mentioned in our suggestions, is to have archaeologists embedded in the community, be they in local authorities or be they regional community archaeologists. Such archeologists would engage with people and can proactively go out into the landscape and engage with landscape stakeholders.

Mr. Rónán Swan:

The question around Part 7 is interesting. It is something we feel is an essential part of the Bill. In the public administration of archaeology in Ireland, we have a vibrant commercial sector of professional archaeologists and a wide range of specialists who are contributing to the preservation of our record in terms of archaeologists being environmentalists and so on.

One of the key roles has been that of the site inspector. Under legislation, inspectors are approved through licence eligibility by the National Monuments Service. That is a process which has evolved over time so-----

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Mr. Swan, I am sorry to interrupt but the audio is breaking down here in the room. Is it breaking down for those attending online too?

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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Yes, it is unfortunately.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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We might come back to Mr. Swan later. We will move on to the next question on the advisory council. I think we have already covered it but if somebody wants to address it briefly.

Mr. Ian Lumley:

I can do that.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Thank you. We will go back to Mr. Swan then.

Mr. Ian Lumley:

I can summarise it briefly. The advisory council provision was a key part of the National Monuments Act 1930. It comprised a number of external advisory bodies including the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland and the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, but it was allowed to fall into abeyance. We pointed out that there is a very effective advisory council regime applying in Northern Ireland. There is an opportunity now with this legislation to match what is being done in Northern Ireland, to look at what is being done in other jurisdictions, to revive that concept of independent oversight and to consider a wider potential number of nominating bodies including for example, the Local Authority Archaeologists Network. We strongly recommend that such a provision is incorporated into this Bill.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Thank you, Mr. Lumley. We will go back to Mr. Swan now.

Mr. Rónán Swan:

In our contract documents, we rely on the current licensing arrangements that archaeologists are qualified once approved by the National Monuments Service through an interview process and so on. However, that does not necessarily have a basis in legislation. Incorporating that and an appeals process into this Bill is important and would be really useful. We can then bring that into our suitability assessment criteria and our quality procurement procedures. That will allow us to reinforce and strengthen them in terms of ensuring that we get very highly qualified people to do the work. I want to stress that the level of qualification and professionalism in the industry is fantastic.

Another key provision is the ability of the National Monuments Service and the Minister to take into possession the records of companies which went into liquidation. During the crash, several archaeological companies went into liquidation and there was no mechanism by which the archaeological and archival records of those companies could be taken in. That is a really important provision to ensure the security of the archaeological archive of the State into the future. I hope that addresses the question.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Thank you. Does Dr. Johnson wish to say something?

Dr. Ruth Johnson:

Yes, thank you Chairman. I would just like to second what Mr. Swan said about the importance of the archive. The paper record is the record of the destroyed monument after an excavation and in so many cases, it is not available. If that is not available, we only have the archaeological licensee's interpretative report and there is no opportunity to go back and revisit the findings. In that context, I would really welcome a provision in the Bill to enable the State to have powers to take those archives back.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Thank you, Dr. Johnson. I note that Dr. Clinton is nodding his head at that suggestion. Does he wish to comment?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

Yes, I agree with Dr. Johnson's point. Ultimately, when people publish the results of their excavations, they come to conclusions but those are their own conclusions. As Dr. Johnson just pointed out, it is wonderful to have the full database, as compiled during said operation.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Okay. We will include that as a recommendation then.

Deputy Ó Snodaigh is next. We have a bit of time left

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Thank you very much but do not encourage me, Chairman.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Turn off the lights when you are finished Deputy.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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It is an area in which I have always had an interest, on a range of different fronts, including history and archaeology. I studied the latter in first year and my father was in the National Museum. There have been a wide range of influences on my life that have made me interested in this area.

In terms of rural Ireland in particular, I understand a lot in terms of where the finds are and where they should be because the logainmneacha, the placenames, tell the story. They point to the facts. Sometimes farmers will claim ignorance whereas the name of the field will suggest exactly what is in that field although the specifics of it may have been lost in the fog of time, so we need to be careful. People might not know exactly what is on their land and there are out-of-the-blue finds, with no history behind them. That is why it is important that we understand our language or our heritage, although one does not have to have Irish to understand it. It is written and informed by superstitions. Why is it that they are called ring forts? Why did generation after generation not go near them? They understood the value of the history and they built up superstitions around it. The superstition was that ring forts were fairy forts and anyone who touched them would have bad luck. There are other superstitions related to burial grounds and so on. This is not just relevant to this country but to every country in the world.

It is important when we are putting the register together to make sure it is not just are register of monuments and their location. We must also include the context because that is the key. This is true of the hill forts in Wicklow or of Newgrange, for example. I remember going to Newgrange as a child. I only visited it once because my parents were more interested in Knowth and Dowth. I remember, before there was any excavation, going into a tunnel there, even though we were not supposed to. We saw a dog coming out of it. We were only kids and could fit in and health and safety issues were not a concern in those days. It was not designated, there was no signage, there was nothing. Now, thankfully, the State has invested money in it but the State does not have the money to invest in 130,000 sites so what do we do? How do we prioritise? We are drawing up legislation to provide protection but how do we go beyond that? How do we give the State the power, through this legislation, to provide that protection? How do we provide encouragement to the State to do more than just list monuments on a register, to go beyond that? Some of the monuments are underground and they should be left there. We do not have the archaeologists to dig them up and we do not want to do so either.

I mentioned Google Maps earlier and signage is important. However, signage does not have to mean huge monstrosities. I attended a presentation a few years ago on the QR code card and that is all that is needed. If we put a QR code on every site, then when people want to find out about it, they can scan the code. They can be directed to a website, with audio and visuals, containing information on that site and links to other sites. That would be a lot cheaper than putting up a brass plaque. Sometimes that is a concern of local authorities.

We have an opportunity, when drafting this legislation, to be imaginative. We must imagine using today's technologies for our benefit. That feeds into TII's concerns about the register of finds becoming an administrative burden. Nobody wants this to be an administrative burden.

There has to be some type of administration and it is hoped that type of approach may help those such as TII, in order that there is not a delay when there is a find and we have the wherewithal to address it in a way in which a decision is made early enough on whether it is to be protected in situ or whatever and if a road, railway or cycle track needs to be protected in situ, that we quickly then find our way around it or find an alternative together, as often should have been the case.

The local authorities were concerned in their presentation about the burial grounds. There is a mention on page 33 of the legislation that the Minister could "vest in local authorities similar burial grounds the status of which was not finally resolved under the 19th century legislation". Local authority archaeology officers were already concerned about additional work on them without additional resources. Will they elaborate on that?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

Dr. Johnson raised that point.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Does Dr. Johnson want to come back on that?

Dr. Ruth Johnson:

That point was drawn to my attention by several of the local authority archaeology network members. We have not had time for a nuanced discussion about it and I am cautious about trying to paraphrase that discussion at this point. All I got was notes from them. Many of these historic burial grounds, especially in rural areas, are still in use for burial. It is about management of that and how burials can be accepted into historic settings and so on and so forth. However, I need to come back to the committee on that with more detail after I have met with the members.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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That would be welcome.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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We have talked about the Valletta Convention but there are three or four other conventions mentioned in the legislation. Head 45 refers to the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects. The next one is the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. Many of these are quite old. The latter convention is from 1970. The final one of which I could find mention was the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. They are all useful to have and protect, but have we signed up to other conventions or not incorporated them properly or are there others to which we have not signed up? There was mention of the Granada Convention among a number of others when we were in the Moore Street advisory committee. People had raised a similar convention to protect built heritage and the likes.

Mr. Ian Lumley:

The Deputy quite rightly said that the Convention for the Protection of the Architectural Heritage of Europe is the Granada Convention and we have the Council of Europe Landscape Convention which includes cultural landscapes such as industrial heritage and parklands or agricultural heritage; Mediterranean olive grove terraces or the stone walls of Aran would qualify as cultural landscapes. There is very much an overlap between these conventions that all relate to cultural heritage. The Deputy quite rightly highlighted some other ones which are a major issue, especially in conflict zones such as Afghanistan where there is major pillage and theft of artefacts which then appear on the international antiquities market.

Indeed, we have some of those concerns in Ireland, where sheela na gigs and early grave slabs were being stolen from sites and there was stuff going to the US that was certainly a concern. I remember it was very serious back in the 1990s. Fortunately, we seem to hear less of that now. What we should look at in Ireland as a developed country - whether through the Paris Agreement on climate action, the UN Convention on Biodiversity and these cultural heritage conventions through the United Nations or the Council of Europe - is to take leadership in the most active implementation of those conventions. The overriding one here is to properly endorse and recognise the Valletta Convention and to explicitly incorporate the specific, most relevant provisions of the convention that are needed to give that wider protection, in particular, to archaeological complexes and landscapes and considering the settings of archaeological monuments, be they urban or rural.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I do not see any hands up and will take the opportunity myself. I do not know who will take the questions I have but ask that the witnesses indicate. It was suggested earlier on that the Department may have suggested that it was not necessary to include Valletta in this legislation. Are we not still bound by the Valletta Convention, even if we do not mention it in this legislation? I say that because we had previous legislation in which people wanted to put in every directive and all legislation. We are bound by the Valletta Convention, anyway. Putting it into the Act does not mean we are any more bound by it. Will somebody clarify that for me?

Mr. Ian Lumley:

We are all very familiar with the application of European Union law and directives, such as the birds, habitats and environmental impact assessment directives, which have resulted in initiation of infringement actions by the European Commission and European court judgments against Ireland and actions taken within the Irish courts that have resulted in Oireachtas legislation being struck down as not compliant with European law.

However, Council of Europe and UN conventions occupy a different category. They do not have a direct application in national law unless transposed into national legislation. We signed up to the Valletta Convention in 1992 and adopted it in 1997, but then there is an obligation on the Government to implement the provisions of that convention in its domestic law and administration. We have clearly been laggard in doing so with Valletta because when one goes back to the Granada Convention on architectural heritage in 1985, we introduced the legislation in 1999 and it was incorporated into the Planning and Development Act 2000. We are clearly way behind in addressing Valletta.

I remember, after the whole controversy over the M3 motorway in the Skreen Valley between Tara and the Hill of Skreen, the big issue there was that the definition given to the archaeological landscape was too narrow and not enough consideration was given to the relationship of the archaeological complex at the Hill of Tara between the Skreen Valley and the Hill of Skreen on the eastern side. Of course, exactly as predicted, it was a fiasco because while a geophysical survey was done, proper site investigation was not and it was only in the course of the road construction that the Lismullin henge was discovered. A henge is a generally circular enclosure. Everybody knows Stonehenge in Britain but most Irish henges are earthen-bank henges and would have been-----

Dr. Mark Clinton:

With wooden borders.

Mr. Ian Lumley:

Yes, with wooden posts and all that. We cut the motorway through that henge by not properly identifying and evaluating the significance of the overall archaeological complex. That is where failure can have a practical impact. We were promised after that that Irish archaeological legislation would be revised and updated to take proper account of the protection of archaeological landscapes and complexes.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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That is one of An Taisce's recommendations. Its submission states: "The ‘Valletta Convention’ should be incorporated and implemented in the proposed legislation."

Dr. Mark Clinton:

As things stand it is not going into the new Act. It has to be adopted and incorporated into it. It is disingenuous to say all its aspects are already there because that is not true.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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It was just suggested that they said it. I would have to confirm if that is what they said. I am not saying-----

Dr. Mark Clinton:

Okay.

Mr. Ian Lumley:

The Department has communicated that the development legislation relates to the planning process. The Valletta convention specifically refers to the environmental impact assessment process. The decision should involve consideration of archaeological sites. It is not just about the site and its physical structure or material but the wider setting and context of the site. That is something we are not doing properly in our planning and environmental impact assessment process.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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That is just for environmental impact assessments. It would not cover a planning application that does not require EIA.

Mr. Ian Lumley:

It specifically refers to the environmental impact assessment process but that applies generally. All too often a planning application will just look at the site itself, such as a ring fort or a standing stone in a rural area. Particularly in some of western seaboard county landscapes, there are monuments that relate to each other in the wider landscape. There might be some standing stones but their significance is in how their geographical position relates to another site across the valley. That is not being given proper consideration in the planning process.

Mr. Rónán Swan:

To clarify, the site at Lismullin was picked up during archaeological investigations in advance of the commencement of road construction. I just wanted to highlight that. That was done by archaeologists under archaeological supervision, in advance of the commencement of road construction there. With regard to the treatment of archaeological sites and their landscape settings, we deal with it from an archaeological perspective, where the archaeological consultant will comment on the landscape. We absolutely take into account the landscape setting of monuments and the inter-relationship between monuments that are either within a scheme or surrounding a scheme. Separately, we also have landscape consultants and landscape specialists who address the issues of landscape in very great detail. I wanted to highlight those points for the committee.

Mr. Ian Lumley:

I would like to clarify the Lismullin henge issue because I participated in the oral hearing.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I will let you clarify that but I do not want this to become a-----

Mr. Ian Lumley:

The locational significance of the Lismullin henge was not identified in the environmental impact assessment process, the planning consent process or the approval by An Bord Pleanála. It simply was not identified in the geophysical survey because it was a wooden henge structure where the different nature and material of the wooden post deposits would not have been identified. The full significance of the Lismullin henge was only discovered after the road consent, when the excavation work for the road project proceeded. That was too late. It should have been identified as part of the planning process and not afterwards.

Mr. Rónán Swan:

On these projects, we do a considerable amount of archaeo-geophysical surveys in advance of the commencement and to help inform the environmental impact assessment report. That is done in order to identify as many known sites as possible. However, we are very cognisant and very aware that there may be many more unknown sites. That is why we put together a comprehensive programme of test excavation, archaeo-geophysical surveying etc., to ensure we can identify as many sites as possible after approval but well in advance of the commencement of construction. I had the privilege of serving on the Lismullin advisory committee along with various other archaeologists. We went into details and considered whether the road could be diverted but it was just not practical to do it in that context. There is a huge amount of consideration. I was invited to sit on that committee by the former Minister, John Gormley, and it was a great privilege.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I want to come back to UNESCO sites for a moment. Management plans were mentioned. Management plans for SACs and various things like that have been called into question previously. Have our management plans for UNESCO sites been the subject of any scrutiny? Who decides whether our management plans for our UNESCO sites are adequate or are being implemented?

Mr. Ian Lumley:

That is done by the cultural heritage section of UNESCO's headquarters in Paris. There is a unit in Paris that has oversight of world heritage sites in Europe, although I am not sure about internationally, and it reviews draft management plans. We had a very serious situation some years ago when major filming for an international franchise took place on Skellig Michael and there was no provision for that in the management plan. It is the same situation for special areas of conservation but we are way behind having management plans in compliance with the habitats directive. An intervention of censure is possible and world heritage status can be removed if the site is not being managed appropriately. That threat has been used in some locations. In Vienna, for instance, a high-rise development was mooted that would have affected the character of the historic city centre of Vienna and the views of St. Stephen's Cathedral. The world heritage committee intervened and said it would undermine the status of the world heritage site. There were similar concerns about the world heritage site designation of the buildings on the waterfront of Liverpool and the impact of development there. There are standards to be met in management plans and the protection of the setting of world heritage sites.

World heritage sites have a core area and a buffer area and that is a very significant issue that is still simmering in relation to the Brú na Bóinne site. The location of the incinerator outside the eastern side of the buffer area has already been controversial for aircraft navigation due to the height of the chimney and the red lights and so on. There is a much more serious issue now with the proposal to build a high-level bridge to the east of Slane, between Slane and the tumulus of Knowth, which is to the west of Newgrange. That would have an impact on the setting of the world heritage site. That is part of the larger agenda for a dual carriageway or motorway from Dublin to Derry, which is something that should no longer contemplated as we need to move away from car-based transport and development.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I asked earlier who makes the decision to preserve by record or relocate to some other site. Mr. Swan answered that question but Dr. Clinton seems to disagree with an aspect of that.

Dr. Mark Clinton:

As a note of a clarification to Mr. Swan, it is not true the former Minister, John Gormley, made the decision on the fate of the henge. Was that not done by his predecessor the evening before he left office?

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I remember this.

Dr. Mark Clinton:

Mr. Swan mentioned Mr. Gormley but he did not make the decision to remove the monument. It was made.

Mr. Rónán Swan:

Does the Chairman wish me to address that?

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I do not think we need to go down that route. It is well-documented and anybody can look back at the record and see who was Minister when that decision was made.

On the question of preserving on-site, I do not understand the process around that. It is up to the Minister to decide whether to preserve this find on-site as it is and move the road, or change the building layout, or whatever it will be. Alternatively, it can be decided to preserve it by record, which means you just bury it, go through it, destroy it.

Dr. Mark Clinton:

The law as is stands was introduced in 2004 under supplementary provisions to road development, section 14A subclause (4) (i) to (v), inclusive. One can preserve it. One can renovate or restore it. One can excavate, dig, plough or otherwise disturb the ground. The crux is that one can "demolish or remove it wholly or in part or to disfigure, deface, alter, or in any [way] injure or interfere with it". That was the godlike power given under the amendment in the Act of 2004.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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That was the amendment Dr. Clinton referred to earlier. I will let Mr. Swan come in soon but I want to follow on with this question. The suggestion is that if we had an advisory council, it would be the best body to make a determination on what we should do here. Earlier, I asked if we had an advisory body, how busy would it be? How many times would it be called into action? Would it be constantly having a look at sites? There are approximately 130,000 monuments. We are obviously going through another cycle of construction and development. It is possible that not as many roads will be built as there have in the past, but roads maintenance will continue. How resourced would the advisory council have to be and how quick would it have to be in order to react? When someone has to wait a long time for a determination, that is when damage can be done. That is when people get frustrated and they say that they might not go into this process at all and find another way of doing this, as we have seen happen at various historical heritage sites.

Mr. Rónán Swan:

I will give an example of the N5 Ballaghaderreen to Scramoge project. This is appropriate because the existing N5 goes through the complex at Rathcroghan. The road was moved north of that scheme and is off the plateau there. We did a lot of advanced archaeological work in terms of archaeological geophysical surveying to identify sites along the scheme. We did either assessment or top work and so on. We went to the board with comprehensive detail of the number of archaeological finds that we knew about.

On the approval of the scheme, as it is under the Act of 2004, we needed to seek ministerial direction. Ministerial directions are sought from the Minister to allow for additional archaeological works to take place post-approval. That included an additional archaeology geophysical survey, test trenching and test excavation along the entire length of the scheme to identify what had not come to light previously. In addition to that, we did test excavations on a number of sites along the route previously and, subsequently, directions for registration numbers were included. Those were excavated as part of the scheme. There was a huge body of work in this one scheme. Some 101 sites came from that body of work along that scheme. Along this new corridor, post the environmental impact assessment, we have the post planning-assigned part of construction. We had a wide body of sites to come across. One can imagine the situation if there was an advisory council that had to deal with 100 sites.

At the moment, we have the ministerial directions coming in and we do not have registration numbers. Ministerial directions provide the scope for all the works while going along. We do similar things for our public transport projects in regard to developing our archaeological culture strategies. There is a significant body of work that goes into this. For each individual element of the works, one has to apply for a registration number, section 26 licence. On one level, that is the role of the National Monuments Service on behalf of the Minister. We would be creating another national monuments service in addition to the National Monuments Service and the work it carries out. I am only focusing on my role in road schemes, etc., but there are also water schemes, infrastructure developments, utilities, as well as a whole range of housing schemes. There is a whole other body of work. We would be duplicating and creating another set of works in that regard, and that could be problematic.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Dr. Johnson has indicated. I will then bring in Dr. Clinton who wishes to comment on this also.

Dr. Ruth Johnson:

I will look at preservation in situand via record and those decision-making capacities from a different angle, coming from the Planning and Development Act side. Where local authority archaeologists are in place and have robust conditions attached to grants of permission, there is oversight through compliance. There is a lot of pressure on us to make decisions in relation to finds on sites that might constitute a relevant thing or a thing of interest. There is an assumption, where an archaeologist is employed by a developer to do rescue excavation for a development site in an urban regeneration area, that feature of a potentially relevant thing does not get evaluated. In some cases, we have clauses in our conditions that we have to exercise, and that is pressurised and difficult. Obviously, there is a huge risk for the developer and we have to be cognisant of that as well as the fact that they have a valid permission to develop the site and that we are managing loss. Where there is a national monument, one might find something one considers to be related to that archaeological monument but it is subsurface and it is on a site 50 m away. That decision-making process falls on the local authority archaeologists.

I refer to a previous point Senator Moynihan raised in terms of resourcing and the decision making that happen in local authorities at that level. With regard to the architectural offices, a provision was made in the Planning and Development Bill 1999 on architectural heritage for the appointment of conservation officers. That might be something the committee might like to consider in relation to archaeological heritage too.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Does Dr. Clinton wish to come back in on the advisory council duplication comment?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

On the advisory council, in many ways it would make life a lot simpler if, as I said earlier, there was an equivalent to an Coimisinéir Teanga. They will not be running in saying that they found half of a fulacht fiadh, that it should be a national monument and that the road should be stopped. There are exceptional discoveries as was saidvis-à-visLismullin - we are rehearsing the whole thing again - where it arose. As my colleague, Mr. Lumley, said, if that henge was found on the top of Tara Hill it would have been hailed and glorified as another aspect of the Tara complex. It was actually in an interesting position. Through the sagas, we know there was a processional route from the Hill of Skryne down to the valley and up to the tomb complex on the Hill of Tara, much of which cusps on the relevant brow overlooking the valley. What would one expect to find in the valley but a ritual temple site? This was an astonishing discovery and could have been reconstructed easily. It was in a natural dell. Seriously large post holes were found where the beams could have been recreated. If one is looking for parallels, it was covered by the current legislation to renovate and restore it, as per the words of the Act. It could have been done just as was done in Knowth. If one visits Knowth today, one will see a reconstructed wooden henge dating to the late Neolithic period, going by the grooved ware. The Lismullin henge site should have been preserved, renovated, reconstructed and the road should have been moved. Unfortunately, the then Minister, John Gormley, did not get to make that call.

I should not be quoting him but the point is that should have been preserved. That is what is needed. If we do not want the advisory council, we could have a coimisinéir dúchais to deal with the heritage of exceptional sites. We cannot tell people, to use the words of many a judge I have heard, not to bring a vexatious case and to be serious lest they will be quickly dismissed by a commissioner. Imagine approaching the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission and saying you needed to register a complaint. You would be shown the door very quickly if you complained about your call not being answered in ten seconds. The advisory council will comprise serious people who will not welcome their time being wasted. There should be a bit of respect for the potential members of this potential advisory council.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I think everybody has respect for everybody else’s views here, and this is really assisting us to get this legislation right and to ensure we make proper recommendations. It was mentioned that Northern Ireland is a good example of where an advisory council works. Is Dr. Clinton suggesting the advisory council would be brought in only for potentially exceptional sites, whereby at some stage some sort of preliminary assessment would have been carried out by somebody else? It could be the network of archaeological officers at local authority to try it out and make an assessment.

Dr. Mark Clinton:

The present system works very well. We are talking about the exceptional cases, where there-----

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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The advisory council will be for exceptional cases.

Dr. Mark Clinton:

Yes, we cannot waste the time of a body comprising some serious scholars. They are not going to be convening in respect of some idiotic proposal.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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That clarifies a recommendation-----

Dr. Mark Clinton:

That is how the system previously operated following the 1930 and 1954 amendments.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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To clarify, in respect of An Taisce's recommendation to “re-activate the Monuments Advisory Council, to integrate checks and balances into the proposed legislation”, that recommendation applies only to exceptional sites.

Dr. Mark Clinton:

Absolutely.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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May I alter that recommendation to reflect Dr. Clinton's response?

Dr. Mark Clinton:

Yes, we are happy with that.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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We are almost out of time but I have some questions about the heads of the Bill. They relate to something Deputy Ó Snodaigh asked earlier. Many monuments have no signage and we do not know where they are. In a way, that offers them some protection until something goes wrong. We do not attract heavy footfall to them, we do not need landscape management plans and there is no great demand for car parking. How can we protect that kind of hidden nature of some of those sites if we were to provide signage and information and perhaps attract footfall?

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.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Will Parts 8 and 9 provide for that or do we need to be stronger on it? Dr. Greene or any of the other guests can revert to me on that if they wish.

Dr. Sharon Greene:

Off the top of my head, from what I can recall from having read the general scheme, I am not sure it does provide for that. It provides for national monuments and other bodies to promote, publish and so on but I think we can go further with the provision, as I said earlier, of having archaeologists in the landscapes and within the communities whom people will know to talk to. We should not just wait for the public to say they have found something to be identified or that they are interested in. We need people who can go into the landscape, meet landowners and educate them. As I said earlier, it is important that we inform landowners about what they own, which is allowed for, and tie that information to the property in order that if someone buys a property, he or she will know what is there.

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.

Dr. Mark Clinton:

It is stated in our submission that this will have to be recognised by the State where, say, there is a crumbling castle or abbey on private land and increased rainfall and so on due to climate change is doing serious damage. Abbeys, for example, were built with mortar, not for the rainfall we are potentially going to get in the coming years. If someone is unlucky enough to have one of these monuments on his or her land, it is reasonable that there would be a grant system because the OPW will not be able to deal with it. Facilitating the protection of monuments on private land is being totally overlooked. The OPW is always very vocal in defending its own patch and it is very good at that, but only about 700 sites are protected by the agency, which leaves more than 100,000 on their own.

As Deputy Ó Snodaigh says, a farmer, landowner or whoever cannot be expected to pay for the stabilisation of an abbey, a castle site or an earthen structure that is not a national monument. It is a lacuna.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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We will now hear from Dr. Johnson, followed by Mr. Swan and then Dr. Greene.

Dr. Ruth Johnson:

I thank the Chairman. I take the opportunity under Part 8 to flag the important role of local authority heritage professionals in reaching out to communities and engaging with them. We have a network of-----

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I am sorry, Dr. Johnson's microphone seems to have muted.

Dr. Ruth Johnson:

Can you hear me now?

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Yes.

Dr. Ruth Johnson:

Through country development plans, local area plans, heritage plans, climate change adaptation plans and so on, as well as the various grants we administer at local authority level, we are uniquely placed to be the point of contact with owners of monuments and to raise awareness. I will not go into detail but there have been many schemes where the community-local authority model of heritage officer, local authority archaeologist, conservation officer and community liaison officer has delivered directly into the heart of communities. These include the conservation management plan in Finglas that got under way under the community monuments fund, CMF, last year. I flag that important role and the need for those resources for local advice and expertise to raise awareness. The key message is that engaging with communities, especially with young people through schools, and local heritage groups that are already interested, is a fantastic way of raising awareness and getting ground-level support and protection for our monuments.

Mr. Rónán Swan:

One issue I wish to highlight is the amazing resource that is the historic environment map viewer available from the National Monuments Service onarchaeology.ie. These monuments are already on the Record of Monuments and Places, RMP, etc., and are in the public domain. In TII we are doing quite a bit of work making our information available on digital heritage collections. In terms of bringing the past to life and making it accessible to people, there are many opportunities we can use online, including social media, story maps and videos. One interesting area, which we have been discussing with the National Monuments Service, is our greenway projects, through which we bring people through the landscape, and bringing people towards monuments and places of interest. Last year we were involved in the Athlone cycleway. Its route is right beside Athlone Abbey. It is great route for cyclists to go through. It is opening up and giving many people the option to engage with the past in a way they perhaps have not done before.

The original National Monuments Advisory Council was established when there was no professional National Monuments Service in place. The committee may, in its deliberations, wish to look at how the former advisory council worked originally and, after that, how it worked with the National Monuments Service and, later, with the Heritage Council that replaced it.

Dr. Sharon Greene:

I will be very quick. As Mr. Swan noted, these registers are already available, essentially. The sites and monuments record, the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage and so on, are all already searchable online for anyone to use to find sites in their locality or wherever they want to go. That is not really a concern about making this new register public. However, I acknowledge the problem of land in private ownership where there are monuments and issues of access, as well as people's understanding of that. There is often an assumption that if national monuments are in State care but located on private land, we must have a right of way to visit it because it belongs to the State. That is not so in every case. The whole question of private ownership, access and so on would have to be part of the programme of public education around access and conservation of monuments.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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That leads on to another question. I thought we would wind up. I notice that where a monument is on private land, the landowner has an option to ask the Minister to take it into guardianship or ownership. Does that convey any rights to people to come and visit where the Minister then has responsibility for the monument? Does that change the position as regards access?

Dr. Sharon Greene:

Not with access, as far as I know.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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No. It is still private property.

Dr. Sharon Greene:

That is unless they come to some agreement. There will usually be some provision for access for the commissioners of the OPW for maintenance and so on, as far as I am aware. There is not automatic access to the public, however.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I thank our guests for this interesting and helpful engagement. We will have a meeting with the OPW and the Irish Planning Institute next week or the week after that to discuss planning matters. We have sought the views of the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine as well because many of these monuments will be on farmland. Farmers are probably the biggest cohort of landowners with monuments on their property, so we have further work to do. I thank Dr. Clinton, Mr. Freemantle, Mr. Lumley, Dr. Greene, Mr. Swan and Dr. Johnson for their help.