Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

I am unhappy with most of what the Minister has done to date, not least the Protection of the Environment Bill, but also many other Bills on which I am happy to disagree with him. The basic, underlying theory of the Bill is to permit the destruction of national monuments to facilitate infrastuctural developments. Its introduction makes clear that the Minister is as unsuited to holding responsibility for heritage as he is for holding responsibility for environmental protection. Let us hope the imminent Cabinet reshuffle will throw up a more enlightened person to take responsibility for this important portfolio.

If the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government had any interest in heritage protection, he should put in place mechanisms to ensure that prior to the commencement of developments such as the Carrickmines interchange proper procedures and impact assessment studies are carried out to ensure that mistakes such as those which led to the Carrickmines debacle are not repeated and that national monuments are detected early and avoided when building infrastructure.

Time and again, the conservationists protesting against the destruction of Carrickmines and the ramming of a motorway through the historically rich valley of Tara-Skryne have made clear that they are not anti-roads. Has the Minister examined the composition of the groups in question? They could hardly be called radicals because they are not part of the rent-a-crowd brigade. They represent the most conservative elements of society and are far from anti-roads or anti-progress.

They, along with many others, seek that roads should be built legally having followed proper planning processes, including the early identification of heritage sites and national monuments so that they can be avoided rather than destroyed. Instead, the Bill provides that the Minister can grant a consent for the carrying out of works to a national monument which may result in the destruction of part or all of the monument after archaeological works have been carried out.

It has been claimed, with some merit, that this Bill will legalise badly designed roads. It will encourage developers, at the very least, to push roads through in a way that suits their own desire to make substantial profits, regardless of whether they cut through heritage sites, safe in the knowledge they will ultimately be permitted to destroy national monuments. Alternatives to both the Carrickmines interchange and the M3 motorway were put forward by conservationists seeking to preserve these sites. The legislation will result in developers having no motivation to compromise and it will lead to a repeat of the destruction of Viking Dublin at Wood Quay. This was a scenario we hoped would never be seen again, as Governments, under pressure from the EU, have since then put in place increased protection for our heritage, something this Bill seeks to remove.

Under the legislation, the director of the National Museum will have only 14 days to consider proposals to grant permission for the destruction of national monuments. This is inadequate for consideration of a newly discovered national monument. I thought the Minister might have meant 14 months. While I do not advocate a 14 month delay, I will table an amendment providing for a reasonable time for consideration of proposals.

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