Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 47:

In page 147, after line 39, to insert the following:

“Report on alignment of development with protection and conservation

169.The Minister shall, within 12 months of the passing of this Act, lay a report before both Houses of the Oireachtas outlining a review of the proposals/objectives within the National Development Plan and their consistency with-

(a) the protection and conservation of built archaeological heritage, including ringforts and their surroundings,

(b) the protection and conservation of natural archaeological heritage,

(c) the protection and conservation of national monuments and prescribed monuments, and

(d) the need to prevent the release of embodied carbon and the role of natural and built heritage in climate action.”.

I am moving this amendment on behalf of Senator Higgins. The amendment is fairly self-explanatory. The rationale is that we know from the 2004 amendment to the National Monuments Act that there was a large amount of destruction of our archaeological heritage and we have seen the impact that development can have when not cognisant of the protection and conservation of our built and natural heritage. For example, the most recent survey on the destruction of archaeological sites carried out by the Heritage Council in 2001, which surveyed 1.4% of all known monuments in the State, found that 34% of ringforts had been destroyed since the first record of the ordnance surveys beginning in the 1820s. The rate of destruction increased over decades, reaching 6.5% in the late 1990s. We need to ensure that such destruction is halted and the objectives of the national development plan are aligned with archaeological conservation, which we touched on earlier. Both issues are important, which I acknowledge.

The point on embodied carbon comes back to our archaeological heritage yet again, and I know the Minister of State is fully aware of and committed to all of this area. The paper by Andrew Potts, published by ICOMOS, warned that climate change is one of the most significant threats to people and their living environment, including, and importantly, our cultural heritage worldwide. The paper recommends that the continuous maintenance and sensitive adaptive reuse of existing and historic buildings avoids energy-intensive new construction and land use, promotes waste avoidance and preserves embodied carbon that would be released from demolition. We are looking at how we can utilise our cultural and architectural heritage for climate action in line with sustainable development. That is the rationale behind this amendment.