Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 3:

In page 19, between lines 14 and 15, to insert the following:

“ “archaeological interest” means objects, sites, structures and other items associated with historic and cultural heritage;”.

The rationale behind this amendment is that the term "archaeological interest" appears frequently in the Bill but there is no clear definition of what this means. The term appears far more often than the word "Valletta", which only appears three times in the Bill. Article 5 of the Valletta Convention does make reference to "archaeological interest" so I feel it is necessary that this is defined.

This amendment aims to give greater clarity as to what is meant by "archaeological interest". We will talk about Valletta quite a bit throughout this process. One thing is very clear from reading the pre-legislative scrutiny, PLS, and from the deliberations of the joint Oireachtas committee when we teased all of this out. There was a very heavy endorsement from the witnesses telling us of the significance of Valletta and if that was a preamble to this legislation it would cover an awful lot of it but that is not the case. That is somewhat disappointing. It is covered in our PLS report as well. I think there is some merit in this but again, if the Minister of State can convince me that this is all covered somewhere else and does not require a further amendment I have to accept that.