Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

On the face of it, this Bill to protect our historic and archaeological heritage is a very good and welcome thing. Looking at the size of the Bill, some officials deserve thanks for putting it together and it is clear a lot of work has gone into it. I am not going to pretend at this stage, given we are only a few Deputies trying to cover all of the bases, that I have read all of it, but I am going to try as best I can to get on top of it. It is incredibly important to do everything we can to protect our historic, cultural and archaeological heritage.

The general objectives of the Bill, as I understand it, seem reasonable, for example, to streamline the way in which we register monuments, collate all of the legislative protections in one Bill and align ourselves with the various international conventions on protecting culture, archaeology, heritage and so on. All of those things seem like a very good idea.

To be honest, I have not had time to think about where we have failed. One case that strikes me at a local level is the Carlisle Pier in Dún Laoghaire. I think it was an outrageous act of vandalism to allow the ferry terminal there at a location which was one of the main exit points for the Irish diaspora and to allow the pier to be torn down. Many people may not know it, but the oldest suburban railway in the world is the railway between Dublin city centre and Dún Laoghaire, which used to be called Kingstown. It terminated at the Carlisle Pier, bringing people to the mail boat, as it was, or the ferry. Huge numbers of our diaspora, people who were forced out of this country, were on that railway and left on that ferry. The fact it was torn down is shocking, to my mind. I do not know if it was on any register or how it was protected, but it was not protected.

Of course, I am familiar with the battle around Moore Street and I have engaged with that group on a number of occasions. Given the idea that a flipping shopping centre is going to impact a site of that historic importance, where the rebels of 1916 escaped after they left the GPO, and that there should be any question of what takes priority - the interests of a property developer to build a shopping centre or the preservation of a battle site of the revolution that helped found this State - I find it quite extraordinary that we are in that situation.

There is a huge imperative for us to genuinely protect our very rich historical, archaeological and cultural heritage. Generally speaking, we have not done that and, in fact, many people are not aware of just how rich the heritage may be in their own area. I am a student of English literature and one of the things I often think about is how many locations are associated with really extraordinary writers and talents that this country has produced but who are not fully celebrated. People are not even aware, in some cases, of the fact they are Irish, despite being great writers and names of importance on an international scale in writing and literature. We do not fully celebrate those things and the sites where they may have lived or worked, and so on, and certainly do not take advantage of them.

I am very conscious of Deputy Matthews's point that we have to be very careful with this stuff as well. On the one hand, we want the public to have access to important monuments and sites of cultural and archaeological heritage but, on the other hand, we do not want to turn them into Disneyland and ruin them by having completely unrestricted access in a way that can damage them. There is a balance to be struck. These are very sensitive matters and I think we have failed in many respects.

I can think of one example not too far from here, off Grafton Street. People may have noticed a big, new, fancy, modern-looking building where there used to be more traditional architecture, probably Victorian or Edwardian, just off the top of Grafton Street. While I do not want to be too insulting to the architects, it was a very nice street and now there is this big, symmetrical, square, modern-looking building. Frankly, I think it has significantly damaged one of the nicest streets in a very important area off Grafton Street. That sort of stuff goes on and we do not know about it until it is too late and the damage is done.

All of that is the long way round to saying that what this Bill is trying to do is important. I bow to the experts who have been following this in great detail. A number of concerns have been expressed about the Bill and they seem to me very reasonable concerns. I have not yet heard what the Minister’s responses are to these criticisms, but the central one seems to be that all of the power is going to be vested in the hands of the Minister in terms of the ability to deregister monuments and to make decisions which could open the way for or allow destruction, demolition or activities that could potentially damage sites of archaeological, historical or cultural importance. All the Bill requires is that the Minister, if I have the phraseology right, “may” consult the Heritage Council. A lot of power is vested in the Minister and the people who are charged with the protection of our heritage do not really have any significant say and can be ignored. In any event, the Heritage Council is not properly equipped or staffed with the experts - the historians, archaeologists and other specialists - who will be required to make the decision where we have contentious decisions about whether monuments are registered or deregistered, whether they should have protection or whether it is legitimate to allow those things to be damaged, destroyed or demolished.

That is not good enough. Ministers and Governments come under pressure from developers, as we know. We had a long and not very noble history in this country of developers dictating things in a way that damages the common good and the common interest. The idea that we would jeopardise our history, culture and archaeological heritage by vesting powers in a Minister who may be subject to influence by profit-driven developers is not acceptable.

We need safeguards. We must have a body comprised of experts with real knowledge of history, archaeology and culture who can make objective, knowledgeable and detailed assessments of the real value to society, our culture and our people of these sites. I do not pretend to be an expert on this but those who are more knowledgeable than me are calling for a fully independent, national monuments advisory council that has statutory teeth. It must have the power to genuinely protect our archaeological, cultural and historic heritage and must be properly staffed with experts in order that it is able to discharge that responsibility. Some experts are expressing concerns about the Bill because it fails to do the aforementioned. They argue that there is active resistance, which they cannot really explain, to setting up such a body even though it was originally required under the National Monuments Act as passed in 1930. That Act required the setting up of such a body so it would seem that in the early days of this State, there was an awareness among Governments and politicians of the day that our culture, archaeology and history were important and rightly so. One would expect that, particularly in a country that established itself in a fight against a colonial power that tried to systematically destroy our history. That is what British colonialism did; it tried to systematically destroy our history, identity and culture. The founders of this State made some mistakes, in my opinion, particularly because of their attitude to some of the architecture that was left here by the colonial power, much of it built by Irish workers. In fact, a lot of the stuff that was built in Britain was also built by Irish workers. There was something of a cultural-vandal approach taken by the early State to some of the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian architecture but nonetheless, despite significant mistakes, there was a recognition, through the National Monuments Act 1930, that there should be a body of experts with oversight and power to protect our heritage, culture and history. I am interested to hear what the Minister of State has to say about this. The criticism, which seems valid, is that the Government is resisting that. Critics argue that it is precisely the same sort of resistance that was put up to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. Most people would now accept that the EPA is a good thing. Its job is to oversee our environment and make sure that it is adequately protected. Surely it is reasonable to ask that there would also be a body with teeth, expertise and resources to adequately protect our extremely rich archaeological and cultural heritage.

The last point I would make is a bit of a tangent but I will throw it into the debate anyway as I have a few minutes left.

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