A MOTION enabling Ireland to approve the European Convention on the Protection of Archaeological Heritage was passed.
The Minister of State for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Mr Donal Carey, said it was a revised version of the convention signed in 1969, to which Ireland was, not a party. The ratification of the present convention was an important statement of our continuing commitment to the protection of the archaeological heritage.
It laid down European standards for the protection of this heritage and set out a range of obligations which signatories undertook to implement. These obligations related to identifying the heritage and implementing measures of statutory protection.
He believed our existing legislation and practice was adequate to give full effect to all the obligations the convention, imposed. The programme for government contained a number of commitments on heritage. The Heritage Council would establish a committee on archaeology.
The Fianna Fail spokeswoman on arts and culture, Ms Sile de Valera, welcomed the motion and said she agreed with the declaration in the convention that archaeological heritage was essential to the knowledge of the history of mankind. "Our heritage is seriously threatened with deterioration because of an increasing number of major planning schemes, natural risks, clandestine or unscientific excavations and insufficient public awareness."
The convention sought to protect archaeological heritage as a source of the European collective memory and an instrument for historical and scientific study. Fianna Fail, in government, would commit itself to the development of an increased sense of the importance of the archaeological heritage and its increasing fragility.