Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Heritage crafts are just one part of the rich intangible cultural heritage of our nation. These crafts and skills are transmitted from generation to generation and constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history. They contribute to our sense of identity and continuity, respect for cultural diversity and human creativity. Heritage crafts include practices from traditional building skills in thatching, stonework and boat building, to lace-making and making hurleys and musical instruments such as harps and uilleann pipes. Heritage crafts also include textile work such as spinning fleece, weaving and felting, rush and straw craft, rope making, traditional woodwork and heritage gardening.

My Department protects and promotes heritage crafts through a number of avenues. The Heritage Council, which my Department funds, provides grants for the protection and preservation of the national heritage. It is primarily a matter for the Heritage Council to decide how its funding should be allocated across the range of research, education and conservation programmes it supports annually, having regard to competing priorities for limited resources. Grant schemes are advertised by the Heritage Council on its website.

The Heritage Council's heritage in schools scheme also promotes children's engagement with heritage crafts. This scheme makes available to primary schools a current panel of 160 heritage experts, including experts in traditional crafts who visit primary schools to work directly with the pupils. The scheme currently reaches nearly 100,000 primary school pupils over the course of 2,000 school visits each year. The value of the scheme is in the richness and depth of knowledge it makes available to children and teachers, engaging children in a direct experience of their heritage, preferably outside the classroom, where possible and appropriate. Practitioners of crafts are themselves part of the living heritage.

See this speech in context