Austin Deasy
Question:4 Mr. Deasy asked the Taoiseach if he will provide additional moneys estimated at £120,000 to allow the work in recent years on archaeological digs in Waterford city, involving the Viking settlement, to be documented.
Ceisteanna — Questions. Oral Answers. - Waterford Archaeological Digs.
The National Heritage Council have the task of distributing national lottery funds to heritage projects, including archaeology. The council have already allocated £176,850 to the post-excavation work resulting from these excavations and £70,000 had previously been allocated by my Department, also from national lottery funds.
The question of whether additional grant assistance can be made available is entirely a matter for the council which have complete independence in deciding on the priorities for grant assistance and the amount, if any, in each case.
I understood that the Taoiseach previously gave a grant of £70,000. Will he consider increasing that by a further £120,000?
That is probably the Deputy's first question since he has returned to the Front Bench, so I will have to give it serious consideration. The £70,000 was given by my Department directly, before we transferred that function to the National Heritage Council. The position now is that the Heritage Council deal with these matters and my Department do not deal with them directly. There are other sources. Waterford have done very well in this regard. These excavations are very important, very interesting excavations and because they are inner city urban type excavations they were treated much more favourably than normal. I promise the Deputy that I will have a look at it and see where there are any other sources.
The Taoiseach flattered to deceive. I was hoping he was coming up with something but he passed it off to the National Heritage Council. Will the Taoiseach use his good offices with that council? I agree with what he said about the importance of the excavations: it is perhaps the most important Viking settlement in the country, including Wood Quay. A sum of £1 million has been spent carrying out the excavations. Surely it is worth providing this £120,000 to document the findings of those excavations. Would the Taoiseach not agree?
I agree with the Deputy that perhaps the most important aspect of these excavations is, apart from their intrinsic merit, that they are a good example for others to follow, because the urban authority and the developer have combined to maximise the archaeological value. That is something we should encourage. That was what influenced the exceptional level of grant already made. I do not approach the National Heritage Council about these matters because, as I have explained here frequently, I am very happy to leave those sort of artistic value judgments to the experts. I am an expert on many things, but I like occasionally to hand it over to better recognised experts.
(Interruptions.)
What I said to the Deputy was that there are other sources which will be looked at.
Thank you.