John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the Minister's response. I did not get a copy of her script, so I would be grateful for that too. I received a two-line reply from the Minister to a parliamentary question on this issue yesterday. She has given a much more comprehensive reply today.

There is an urgency about the situation. While I take the Minister's point that none of this would have been discovered had someone not bought the site, sought to develop it and sent in an archaeological team, there is a report already. A full and comprehensive archaeologist's report has been submitted as part of the planning application. I wonder where the Department stands on this. The urgency owes to the fact that an application has been submitted to demolish the house and clear the site with a view to developing it.

To illustrate the scale of development on the site and why we need to assess its significance or otherwise, the developers sought to build 626 residential units, mainly in apartment blocks, in a submission to South Dublin County Council. As the Minister will be aware, campaigns for the local elections are under way and, therefore, it is a live issue in Scholarstown, Knocklyon, where my two colleagues, Councillors Emma Murphy and Deirdre O'Donovan, have been asked many questions about the matter. People are conscious that a decision on the planning application is imminent. I do not seek to get in anybody's way but we must bear in mind the nature of some previous archaeological discoveries. There were some lucrative archaeological discoveries only two miles away, at the site of the Hellfire Club. Given that a full archaeological report has been submitted to the county council, the absence of any meaningful response from the Department until today in respect of what role it can play in what will be a rather overwhelming planning permission application on the site is disappointing. Planning applications move quickly.

I would like the Minister's commitment, as the Minister with responsibility for heritage and the preservation of such sites, that she and her Department will keep a close eye on ensuring that the interests of the local community, of our heritage and of our history are preserved in the context of any planning application that proceeds in the future.

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