The Heritage Council

Our heritage is all around us. It includes our landscapes, countryside, rivers and lakes, our archaeological sites, our buildings, our history, folklore, language and customs. It’s what makes our towns, our villages, our parishes special.

Heritage gives a place its identity, its character, its distinctiveness. As we plan for our own futures, we must also plan for the future of our heritage. Wise planning will ensure that the best elements of this heritage — those that enhance our communities and enrich our lives — will be passed from generation to generation. In doing so, we will also ensure that our local areas and communities are good places in which to live and work.

The Heritage Council was established as a statutory body under the Heritage Act, 1995. It takes an integrated approach to heritage, with responsibilities that include both its cultural and natural aspects. The Heritage Act provides a definition of ‘heritage’ — and its breadth is truly comprehensive. It includes monuments, archaeological objects, heritage objects such as art and industrial works, documents and genealogical records, architectural heritage, flora, fauna, wildlife habitats, landscapes, seascapes, wrecks, geology, heritage gardens, parks and inland waterways.

The Heritage Council has a particular responsibility to promote interest, education, knowledge and pride in national heritage. In its current strategic plan, the Heritage Council has set out its core principles and goals. Its concern with the conservation and care of the nation’s heritage, and how this can best be done at a time of great change while building public support for its mission, is at the heart of that plan.

The Heritage Council’s work is underpinned by three core principles:

* Partnership and Co-operation
* Sustainability and Quality of Life
* Equality, Social Inclusion and Accessibility

In the years since it was established, the Heritage Council has experienced and embraced the dynamic and changing nature of both cultural and natural heritage. It has also witnessed very significant positive shifts in public attitudes. In line with modern European trends, it is the Council’s wish to continue fostering increased significance and value attached to heritage throughout our multicultural society. Greater accessibility to and enjoyment of our heritage are crucial to achieving success.

The public tends to associate ‘heritage’ with ‘history’. But the broad remit of the Heritage Council, encapsulating as it does the country’s natural as well as cultural heritage, takes heritage out of the past and into the present, providing the means to take an integrated approach to managing these resources — resources that provide us with our sense of identity and place. They are vital contributors to our economy, and provide a spiritual and social storehouse that we draw on daily.

To date, the Heritage Council has produced research and policy advice across the range of natural and cultural heritage, producing over 60 publications during its short history. In addition, the Heritage Council has supported hundreds of other publications under its Publications Grants Scheme that aims to make information about Ireland’s heritage available to the wider public.