 everybody. Thanks for coming. I'm going to pretty much as advertised just give you a quick update on the Irish Agri-Environment Scheme which is called Glass and also just discuss a couple of actually two policy areas where archaeology and built heritage are discussed in Ireland. Just to put things in a bit of context, I work for the National Monument Service and in our system we have about a hundred and twenty thousand archaeological monuments recorded in obviously various states of disrepair. Some of them very in very good condition and some of them with no surface trace at all but a hundred and twenty thousand of them nonetheless. And as you can see I've shown you this kind of very bad slide of one of our map from the Historic Environment Bureau just to show you that all the little red dots are archaeological monuments so you can see that they're not concentrated in towns they're mostly in countryside on farmland and in private ownership. So really and I think it's fair to say that until very recent times most of the archaeological monuments built in Ireland were built by farming communities and therefore we've been making the point over the years that the preservation of archaeological monuments in Ireland you can make a very strong case for being a farming issue and it's important to recognize that the reason that we have so many is partly because of these farmers who are interested in them they weren't just not destroying them because they couldn't and that they when they get some recognition in that in something like the agri-environment scheme it makes sense and it's possibly something we can apply to other areas as well. To give you a quick kind of retrospective of agri-environment schemes in Ireland we've had three to date we reps the person there closed for reasons you can well imagine in July 2009 I think a lot of things closed in Ireland in around 2008 2009 and that was one of them and the agri-environment scheme that replaced it had no archaeological actions in it at all and then in 2014 they opened the current one green low carbon agri-environment scheme known affectionately as Gloss which also actually is the Irish word for green so they were very they put a lot of thought into choosing the name and to go very quickly through the structure of it there are three tiers of actions priority environmental assets as you can imagine get get you priority access to the scheme the archaeological actions therefore as you can imagine are in tier number three I think we're all familiar with this situation where you know you're getting archaeological actions into what really is a scheme designed to deal primarily with other things that aren't of an archaeological nature but at least it's in there it would be difficult but they say not impossible to get access to the scheme just by choosing general actions such as the archaeological ones but really they're just aimed at enhancing the main objectives and the the two archaeological actions the overarching kind of term for the archaeological actions in Gloss is that they are aimed the aim is to enhance and maintain visible archaeological monuments in the farm landscape and the two ideas there's one for tillage areas one for grassland one is to put a buffer around monuments and tillage and the buffer was something that's been in use in in the agri-environment scheme since the start in Ireland it's simple and effective and we were quite happy to keep it but we also asked then that they might put in a an action to do it's removing encroaching vegetation from monuments and this is something that arose over the years because in the previous first agri-environment scheme the practice crept in of fencing off monuments I think farmers felt what better could you do for a monument than to stick a fence around it and nothing can get near it but the result of course was that they came quite overgrown and this is just a kind of a small step to try and address that and get rid of some of that you know new and encroaching vegetation so the statistics on it so far approximately 50,000 farmers in glass of them 4,100 have opted for the archaeological options which comes down to 6,400 monuments on their land so it's not going to change the world but you know it's 6,400 more monuments than we're maybe getting looked after in quite the same way you know before the actions are put in place the payments are really too small we all know that but we've kind of taken the view that it's a it's a foot in the door you know it's a start and it's something to talk about in the in the next role development program now I've put this slide on just to remind me to stop and look back rather like the bovine there that you can see and it's just to describe first the idea of kind of how we built up relations I suppose with the the Department of Agriculture over the years because when we first had an agri-environment scheme the contact between the National Monument Service and the Department of Agriculture was was very sporadic it was infrequent there wasn't really kind of a channel of information and we would say that certain kind of errors maybe crept into the schemes over the course of the years because of that and we were very keen to form you know closer relationships with people in the Department of Agriculture and over the years we did that and we were able for example to point to the fact that we deal with the Department of Agriculture over in the last maybe 10 years or so our dealings with the Department of Agriculture and a variety of other areas have increased and we were able to refer to them then when we were trying to get into conversations about agri-environment schemes and I would deal daily with my colleague and Burns there in the Forest Service which is part of the Department of Agriculture but there are a couple of other areas that we deal with them as well and we also began to get into the position of meeting agricultural inspectors on site to discuss archaeological issues on occasion which hadn't happened for many years and we kind of found that they were in the position of dealing with an issue that they didn't fully understand and when they got quite a straightforward and simple clear answer from an archaeologist you could almost see the weight lifting from their shoulders and they began to see the benefit maybe in having this more regular contact so in the lead up to the to the current RDP we had quite good meetings with people from the Department of Agriculture including in one of the early ones a meeting where we were told that we had sent in a submission about the World Development Program and the Department of Agriculture hadn't noticed it and they said that we should raise our profile so we took that as constructive criticism and went ahead trying to do that and find out who we should be talking to you the handful of people that we really needed to be in touch with in the lead up to the current to the current RDP and lost them over the rest of it and I suppose what came out of that then was as you know there is a farm you have to set up a farm advisory service at the moment in Ireland there are about 833 farm advisors on the Department of Agriculture database some of them are in the private sector and some of them are employed by Chagos which is a farm training and advisory body I'll discuss very briefly with you later and in one of our meetings with the Department of Agriculture it's something that we had always wanted actually from the beginnings of our attempts to get something into the current and archaeological action into the current agri-environment scheme we wanted to be in a position to speak to the people who are advising the farmers on a variety of issues so in one of our meetings with the Department of Agriculture we hit upon the right person and we said we would be very happy to address your training events and give a talk on archaeology a talk would be given by an archaeologist from the National Monument Service so we put together a talk there and just about that particular slide that's just the first slide in the talk just to show you the person that we spoke to when I first showed her that slide she knew where it was so we kind of knew we were under the right person straight away and I won't go through the whole talk to you but the punchline really with it is that these are you know the conclusions that we want people to leave the room with if you like at the end of a short talk we want them to know where they find information about archaeological monuments in Ireland we want them to know who they should contact the basics about you know that we recover issues about fencing and grazing and all the rest of that but also I'm very keen that they should leave the room thinking a farm advisor seeing an archaeological monument in front of them on a farm would be thinking that what they're looking at is something that may have been in existence for hundreds if not thousands of years it's not going to be in the best of condition and they just need to have an open mind as to why the external perimeter of it is when they're setting up their buffer so that they bear in mind that you know the archaeological information perhaps beneath the ground that they're not able to see so they need to have a think about it maybe ask about it and if they leave the room with that sort of level of basic knowledge then then we're quite happy so in the course of last year I think I've actually spoken to all of them I've gone to about four or five training events and there've been hundreds of people there actual farm advisors and also some students as well so I think we've kind of covered them all and hopefully we'll continue to do so in the future also in a related matter we there's the the chagas is is another body in Ireland it's the agriculture and food development authority and we very good contact with chagas over the years particularly with one individual and they produce their gloss actions information manual and they they contacted us asking for us to kind of proofread their archaeological information and also to give them some decent images for it and we are very very happy to do that so that that manual will be you know very liberally spread amongst landowners and and advisors across the country so that link has been very important for us as well we've got four pages of archaeology in it which is really quite quite helpful so to with regard to the future then what might happen in the the next or DP in 2015 the Department of Agriculture designated archaeological monuments in Ireland as landscape features and as you know that means that they obviously can't be removed to interfere with but they they're seen as directly affecting biodiversity and can be used as ecological focus areas now that's the logic of the position when they get designated as as landscape features but it hasn't this hasn't been specifically stated in the Department of Agriculture Literature and so on they're not saying yes by all means use an archaeological monument as an ecological focus area even though they're kind of tailor-made for that purpose but we when we ask fortunately again because we have reasonable contact with the department these days we were able to ask the right person how would they react if some of you were to come and ask them to use an archaeological monument as an ecological focus area and they said they'll consider each case on and it would be considered so I think I think we'd be reasonably hopeful that that will happen and again it won't be a huge number of monuments but but it'll be monuments and tillage areas which of course would be in some maybe it's a greater danger and it could be a useful thing to be able to do so the the words that's coming from Brussels at the moment about the cap and what things might be in it they're saying they've more ambitious attitude to greening well we can agree with them on that we can give them archaeological monuments as ecological focus areas if they really want them they're saying it's not it shouldn't be a one size fits all policy but we're sort of making the point that a hundred and twenty thousand monuments in a small country you know is something very specific to us and and really should be catered for if they're going to say it shouldn't be a one size fits all policy and we can also say that the the measures within gloss at the moment are very measurable which they always like and they talk about strengthening the socioeconomic fabric of rural areas well I think we can say and I'll be talking about this more in the next few slides that there is a kind of a certainly a sort of an involved farm income aspect to her to build heritage as well so what we're two minutes oh my god okay forget that we just I just tear through that well so just to go into the related areas that I was going to talk to you about at the moment there's a feeling that Ireland is coming somewhat out of recession and there are a lot of national plans coming out one of them is this national planning framework and you can see there I'm just I don't want to read all this stuff but just to let you know there are a lot of words about built heritage in these plans in that one there are two policy objectives that mention it saying that this recognizing that the special value of built heritage assets in the development of the country and a connection down below then with a rural tourism so this is kind of built heritage tourism community rural development sort of aspect coming out it's repeated then in the national development plan where they've allocated 285 million to built a natural heritage that we spent over the next 10 years and they reckon they they specifically mentioned that the the state's heritage portfolio in that respect and then the government departments are making their own kind of sectoral plans and this is the one for the department I work for but what I want to say to you about that is that the within the sectoral plan obviously there's quite a bit of built heritage in the plan for this department but two of the reports whose findings it says this plan will support and they're just in the bottom paragraph there are the action plan for rural development and growing tourism to 2025 now the interesting thing about those two is that the national monument service made submissions when the public submissions were asked for for the tourism plan and we were also quite involved in meetings to do with the action for rural development now I'm not saying and and so if you like things that found the way into the tourism plan and the action plan for rural development are now being used to support things that are in our own sectoral plan so I hope I'm explaining that well what I'm really saying to you is if you get a chance to make a submission a public submission for something in an area that isn't directly related to yours it might come back and help you in your own plan sometime in the future so keep kind of an eye out for those and I go to very quickly I won't spend more than 30 seconds on these two the tourism plan you know it has quite a lot about built and cultural heritage in it there I won't go into it the kind of curious one is the one at the bottom there where it says it's important that any future fiscal or financial measures to support the built heritage sector fully reflect the contribution that tourism makes to supporting the viabilities of Ireland's built heritage assets so I think that tourism is supporting built heritage which is kind of an interesting thing and and the action plan for rural development is just making this point that cultural and heritage tourism that built heritage are assets that are dispersed around the country and that's very good from their point of view because it's rural it's community development and all of that and very briefly then there's one more policy which is the culture policy and they're saying a very clear statement there that our built heritage is one of the most tangible components of Ireland's cultural heritage and it mentions archaeological monuments the only one that does in fact use the a word and it follows through in their implementation of these policies as well so what I'm saying really is that rather similarly to the way with the this is my last slide with the agri-environment scheme that you know in our submissions to the department of agriculture about the forthcoming rural development plan we'll be hoping to take what they have said or what has been said at the EU level and seed it back to them in the form of a public submission there are a lot of things in the tourism area policy area and the culture policy area related to built heritage as well which you will also hope to take at some future point and feed back to them and say well you know it was your idea and here's how we think you should maybe implement that so my my conclusions I guess are seek out opportunities to make submissions about things outside of your own perhaps policy areas try and build up a few personal contacts it's maybe quite easy in a small country but like ours but it's it's very important I think and underline the idea of monuments being an asset rather than an inconvenience and I think there's also a potential in Ireland at least that in rather the same way that the the agri- the archaeological actions in the agri-environment scheme draw funding towards monuments that in the tourism area there might be a potential for some kind of a parallel thing now whether we can convince anyone to do anything like that is another story but I thought I'd bring it to your attention anyway okay yeah last slide thank you