GHOST HOUSING estates and inappropriate building on floodplains can be avoided in future through development of an integrated national landscape strategy, the Heritage Council has said.
Council chief executive Michael Starrett said such a strategy would afford local communities a voice and an active role in devising a desirable approach to such issues.
Mr Starrett was commenting on a report published yesterday by the council which recommends “landscape-proofing” existing and new legislation, State policies and organisations including the National Asset Management Agency (Nama).
Case studies already exist in specific areas, including the Burren Life programme, the conservation plan prepared by the west Cork Bere Island community, and the heritage in schools scheme set up for primary schools in 1999, which aimed to get children outdoors.
The Bere Island conservation plan emerged in response to concern for the island’s long-term survival, and has been running for eight years. It was developed in partnership with Cork County Council.
“By focusing on and gaining a better understanding of their heritage, the community hoped to find ways to maintain its population and livelihoods. As a result, a work programme focused on heritage and related matters, including agriculture, aquaculture, waste management and youth activities,” the report notes.
An island council has been set up and is running for four years, and the conservation plan has enabled the Bere Island community to access funding and project support at EU level, it says.
The Burren Life programme was established by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Teagasc and the Burren Irish Farmers’ Association, with funding from the European Commission’s Life funding programme.
Its central principles include recognition of and support for the central role of the farmer in planning, delivering, monitoring and promoting farming for conservation.
The Heritage Council says it hopes to drive further such initiatives on “high nature value farming” on the Aran Islands, in north Connemara and on the Iveragh Peninsula, it says, building on the Burren programme’s success.
The council report recommends initiating a Landscape Ireland Act; establishing a national landscape observatory; landscape-proofing existing primary legislation, government programmes and policies; and increasing public participation, accessibility and the use of local knowledge in landscape management.
At a time when Europe is celebrating 10 years of the European Landscape Convention, and Ireland is “looking for new ways to move out of its economic malaise”, the “development of this new framework and approach is very timely”, Mr Starrett said. “Managing our landscapes in an integrated and participative way” takes “full account of our natural, built and cultural heritages, rather than treating them as separate and unrelated concerns”.
The Heritage Council is the statutory body charged with identifying, protecting, preserving and enhancing the national heritage.