A Leas-Chathaoirligh, I wonder if your attention has been drawn to the very irritating buzz in the House. I am prepared to concede that some of it may be due to my somewhat impaired faculties, temporarily, I hasten to add. If anything could be done about it, it would be a great relief.
Among the points I had been making yesterday was the alarmingly rapid rate of destruction of our national monuments, and indispensable to any serious attempt to arrest this is the question of surveying what we have. In the long-term, there has been an archaeological survey going for 50 years, but it has been conducted on a kind of man and boy basis and is very slow indeed in its processes. It is good to note that in what I might call the failed Bruton budget, a substantial sum was set aside for a rapid survey which is now going on. In fact, University College, Cork, has been given a substantial grant to survey and enumerate the archaeological position of national monuments in Cork and Kerry. I am glad to say that, somewhat contrary to people's expectations, when the Bruton budget failed the incoming Fianna Fáil administration retained this generous grant. Would the Minister like me to repeat that? I have paid an unwonted tribute to the present administration. Actually, I am fairly well disposed to the present administration, apart from one or two of the personnel. The point of the survey is that only a proper survey can give information to developers, regional planners and local authorities. So it is very important, pending the setting up of the national council, that we continue with effective surveys.
I welcomed the intimation in the Bill that a new National Monuments Bill is on the way. Then I went on to the National Museum, which is, I suppose, an gad is giorra don scornach, because it is outside our door, so to speak, and we are so much aware of it and its problems. I made the point that it is doubtful whether this policy of sending the treasures of Ireland abroad is a wise one. I should like to repeat that today. Most serious consideration should be given to this. If it is still in operation, so to speak, when the new council are set up, that is something they will have to consider very seriously.
A national museum should be a comprehensive museum and, ideally, all in the same place. It is undesirable that what we have in the line of folk material should now be mouldering peacefully away in mouldering buildings in Daingean. I remember being a member of an appointments board to appoint someone to the museum with a speciality in folk life. This must have been four or five years ago or more and, at the time, there were great expectations that we would have a meaningful folk section in the museum. Alas, there is no progress to be reported, only the reverse.
Other Senators have referred and will, I am sure, refer to the lamentable conditions obtaining in the National Museum. It is ritualistic to pay tribute to the staff despite their difficulties, and I do that most sincerely. What can they do? They are up against all kinds of handicaps. For example, with reference to Senator O'Connell's comment on the canoe which was given a lot of publicity in the past few days, there was a post instituted as keeper of conservation and my information is that this post is unfilled. I do not see how we can be serious in our expressions of concern for the National Museum if we are prepared to tolerate the inadequate staffing of the Irish antiquities section.
It is no good deploring the state of the National Museum unless the new council address themselves to the state of the museum. No matter what money is poured into the existing building, it will not do any good. Money alone is not the problem. The present location of the museum is unsatisfactory. The conditions are archaic. For example, the condition of the air in the museum is a matter of concern. There is no process for air cleaning, I understand. Nor can such a system be instituted in the existing building. This results in layers of dust and generally deleterious conditions.
It is a matter of disappointment then that the Minister's speech, welcome though it was in other respects, gave no indication that a new museum is being contemplated. A new museum we must have, unless we all move out of Leinster House, and even then the complex of buildings is not suitable. I wonder whether we have lost our chance; or whether a chance has passed us by. The most desirable site in Kilmainham with its spaciousness, room for car parking, and a mile only from College Green, could be well integrated with the tourist route along the Liffey. Kilmainham would have been the ideal site for a new museum. That opportunity has passed us by and other developments are taking place there.
The National Museum is the concern of all of us but, to coin a phrase, Dublin is not Ireland, and the existence of regional museums is just as important. There has been some welcome development here in recent years. There have been remarkably good developments of museums like the one in Monaghan. I may say without being chauvinistic that the museum in Cork is a very good museum. It is incidental that I am a member of the museum committee. If we may distinguish between regional and local museums, it is very laudable that small town communities should want to have their own local museums. Such museums are really of little use unless there is effective supervision, and unless there is a semi-resident curator, and unless they are in constant contact with whatever expertise there is in the regional museums.
The new council should turn their attention to setting up this kind of system where you would have a regional museum in Cork advising the local enthusiasts in places like Macroom and, if I may refer to a place nearer to the Minister's heart, Kilmurray, which is the subject of a lovely song we all learned at school. In Kilmurray they have a remarkably good local museum. I am afraid the news there does not seem to be good because it needs this kind of constant supervision. If the resident enthusiast passes on to another world, it is sometimes very difficult to get anyone to keep up that kind of enthusiasm.
Local museums remind us of another important facet of the whole heritage picture, that is, the existence of local scholarly societies. It is welcome to note in recent years the proliferation of such societies. They have added to the whole interest and colour of people's existence in rural Ireland. I speak with some authority because for 16 or 17 years I edited the journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, one which is thriving I am glad to say and which could be a model in its mix of educational winter lectures and summer outings for similar societies which may be set up in the future. I hope that the council when constituted will cast a benevolent eye on such societies and integrate them meaningfully into a general national plan.
This brings me to the point which I hope will be debated ultimately in the proposed amendment to the Bill, that is, the overriding necessity to set up regional committees. In section 12 of its First Schedule the Bill empowers the council to create such committee under their general aegis. It should be more than a kind of desirable option. It should be given mandatory effect. I propose to submit an amendment which I hope the Minister will consider favourably. In fact, in his speech he said he was prepared to consider positively any suggestions we might make, since this is a non-contentious Bill. The council of 15 may well be an excellent council. They may be deliberately designed to include regional, nationwide representation but, nonetheless, they will sit in Dublin. The concerns of the capital and the questions in the capital, the museum and so on, will be their primary considerations. We need regional committees.
The Bill should contain a provision to institute a regional committee, for example, in Connacht-Ulster, the kind of European constituency there; Leinster, since it includes Dublin will probably get a lot of considerations from the main committee; and of course Munster. It is not just a question of keeping regional considerations in the forefront of the council's deliberations; it is that each region has, to some extent, its own distinctive heritage which can be appreciated only, if you like, by the regional committee. I speak, as St. Paul says, as one less wise in matters archaeological, but my understanding is that the heritage in Cork and Kerry is quite distinctive from that in other parts of the country in terms of archaeological monuments. Only a regional committee will deal properly with that.
On Committee Stage I propose to submit an amendment making it definite that the council will set up regional committees, each with a considerable degree of autonomy, and each responsible for funding archaeological research, survey which is such an important stage, excavation and museum administration. Among its functions would be effective liaison with local societies, as I have indicated, and of course education and the dissemination of information. I am going to make a point here which I propose to make again towards the end of my contribution, and that is that it is centrally important that people be educated about their national heritage, that information be disseminated, that each county should have an information centre, perhaps affilitated to the regional museum or the library, where members of the public and tourists and children can have archaeological information presented to them in very palatable form. The existence of regional committees is absolutely essential to the success of the Bill.
Coming back to a point I made yesterday, I am glad to see that some revision of the National Monuments Act is in sight. I am also glad to see that the Bill provides new and more realistic penalties than the ones presently obtaining. We must have realistic penalties. Otherwise the council will not be taken seriously. We must have new provisions about treasure trove. Members may recall that in the case of the Derrynaflan find the professional archaeologist took some stick there because, the point was made, it was left to a local enterprising amateur to discover this treasure and somehow professional archaeologists had been amiss in not being aware that it was there. What was not adverted to sufficiently was the damage that can be done by the enterprising amateur because his concern is with unearthing the treasure trove and God only knows what damage he does to the archaeological context in his enthusiasm and in his greed. So, I hope a new National Monuments Act will contain effective measures to prevent that kind of thing.
I am very glad that this Bill is here. Senator O'Connell yesterday made a very important point when he linked social unrest and frustration in the country with people's lack of conviction that the heritage is really theirs. I was opening an art exhibition recently — indeed the Minister is to perform a similar task shortly — and I made the point that the arts here are, to a large extent, the preserve of a small clique. Some of that clique is elitist and snobbish. There are many people who affect to patronise the arts and do not understand very much about it. I do not mind that. Snobbery is welcome if it results in money for the arts. I prefer the philistine who pretends to be appreciative to the philistine who has no interest at all. But the point I really want to make is that one of the great reasons for vandalism here is that the youth particularly and a large section of the ordinary people do not identify with the arts, with music, with classical music and so on, even though public money goes into these things. The same is true of our archaeological heritage. Vandalism is frequently explained in terms of sheer frustration and alienation, as Senator O'Connell said. People are bewildered and angered because they see things happening around them to which other people have access, which other people find fulfillment in but which is denied to them.
I come back to my point about education, the dissemination of information. A national heritage is a contradiction in terms unless the people feel that it is theirs. So if this proposed council does its job right, if it is provided with money and power — and it must be provided with money and power — then this Bill is a very important one. It is a very important one indeed. Preserving our heritage is not some kind of option. It is not something which we may do or may not do as we please. We have to preserve our heritage if we are to call ourselves at all a civilised country. If the Bill helps us in that then this is a very important Bill and a very important debate in the Seanad. That is not to say that the office of Public Works, for example, is not doing its job extremely well. There is a general measure of satisfaction between professional archaeologists and the Office of Public Works. If the new council is to be no more than another ineffectual semi-State body or another semi-State body which will be ineffectual for lack of teeth, lack of muscle and lack of money, then we might as well stay with the existing system. If it is for real, as they say, then this potentially is a vital important Bill and I am very happy to welcome it.
