The abrupt abolition of the Heritage Service represents an attempt to muzzle its work, argue environmentalists. Eileen Battersby reports.
Fears for the future of Dúchas, the Heritage Service, were realised this week with its abolition by Cabinet decision on Tuesday and the redistribution of staff between the Department of the Environment and OPW. The action follows almost a year of uncertainty and cohesive opposition from Dúchas management and professional staff.
The Government had vociferously promoted the Dúchas "branding" in 1997 and marketed it as finally bringing the heritage policies in this State closer to an acceptable European level of expertise.
Archaeologists and environmentalists agree the Government's contradictory new policies are intended to further muzzle Dúchas, a body with admittedly limited power in the planning area. "Archaeology is seen as too expensive in terms of time and money for developers. By placing heritage within the Department of the Environment, the very department involved with planning, the heritage function is compromised," says a Dúchas staff member who declined to be named.
Following the publication on January 30th of A Draft Report of the Review of the Organisational Arrangements in Relation to the Built and Natural Heritage, commissioned by the Minister of the Environment, Martin Cullen, senior Dúchas management, themselves civil servants, opposed the idea, as did the professional staff, including archaeologists, architects, engineers and ecologists.
A well-argued objection to the break-up of Dúchas was made by the union IMPACT. It not only condemned the Minister's review as "extremely limited", it pointed out "the recommendations contained in the report fly in the face of the Government's own Heritage Plan published only last year". The statement stressed the damage such a break-up would present to "our valuable Heritage, our standing in an international context, and our valued tourist economy". On flatly practical terms, the break-up will result in greater costs to the public which will foot the bill for all organisational change, involving vehicles, publications, signage, site information and a public relations campaign to replace the heavily publicised brand name Dúchas in the public consciousness.
At its most effective, Dúchas can point to projects such as Trim Castle, a site which illustrates a policy of conservation-preservation. Most commentators would agree Dúchas, a body acting within government, has always had to tread a narrow path. Of the 120,000 listed national monuments and sites, fewer than 700 are in State care, even fewer are owned by the State. The vast majority of monuments are on private land.
It is feared new policies may focus entirely on established, high-profile tourist sites such as Newgrange and the Rock of Cashel, leaving less famous sites neglected in terms of preservation.
In the current issue of Archaeology Ireland, published on March 20th, Prof Gabriel Cooney, head of the archaeology department at University College Dublin, warns of the dangers of dispensing with "an entity which, in line with European approaches, integrates the conservation and management of the built and natural landscape". He stresses the need to strengthen the role of Dúchas, not fragment it.
Commenting on the Minister's statement on Wednesday evening, Prof Cooney told The Irish Times, "The Minister refers to bringing together all the heritage functions into the 'environmental area'. Well, by definition if you put the operation and management of national monuments into a different Government department, you are fragmenting the management of the built heritage."
Prof Cooney points out the Department of the Environment is primarily involved with planning, and now the care of endangered archaeology is being placed within that very department. "Who has actually agreed to this? Why hasn't the minister listened to the objections made by the staff who are actively involved?" Whatever about splitting up the natural and built heritage, particularly negative is the fragmentation of the built heritage functions. Among the new proposals is the delegation of heritage responsibility to the local authorities who do not have the expertise and currently seek advice on such matters from Dúchas.
In a letter also published in Archaeology Ireland, Tom Hoare, Assistant General Secretary of IMPACT, cautioned, ". . . It is also feared that the archaeological services - planning, Archaeological Survey of Ireland, archive, licensing etc - could and would be fragmented into smaller, less viable units within the Department of the Environment, effectively emasculating the protection of our archaeological and architectural heritage."
The Minister announced, "Instead of utilising the brand name Dúchas the Department of the Environment and Local Government is now to be called The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government". In response to this, David Sweetman, chief archaeologist of Dúchas told The Irish Times, "The Department of the Environment seems to have little sympathy in that it has allowed the brand name Dúchas to be discarded. This seems to be mainly orchestrated by pro-development sections of the Government, in particularly the Minister, Martin Cullen. The Government and the Department of the Environment view archaeology as an impediment to capital development and infrastructural schemes."
According to Sweetman, "This 'restructuring' has physically spilt up the professionals within the organisation, so that the architects and the archaeologists will now be working in isolation from each other - in different departments." He describes the spilt as "disastrous for heritage, especially the built heritage" adding "the Government has no interest in our heritage except where it is likely to impact on tourism".