HERITAGE OFFICER UPDATES – LOUTH VOLUNTEER CENTRE HERITAGE WEEK EVENT 18/08/2021

To contact the Heritage Officer – This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Heritage Officer is a knowledgeable specialist in heritage matters employed by and working within the local authority and providing advice and information about heritage to colleagues within the Council. The HO also acts as a voice for the heritage, reminding people about heritage and how it relates to aspects of their work. So the HO would talk to the community section, which supports Tidy Towns and other volunteers. The HO liaises with infrastructure, which builds new roads, schools, housing estates and with Operations and Facilities, which look after and maintain existing council property and infrastructure, including Council-owned graveyards, parks and waymarked ways in the countryside. The HO also works with the Tourism section of the Council, with Planning, Environmental Protection and with Archives, Museums and Libraries.

As well as working within the Council, the HO also corresponds with external, state bodies, such as the National Parks and Wildlife Service, LAWPRO, Coillte, the Heritage Council, Fáilte Ireland and Transport Infrastructure Ireland. I also liaise with media people wanting to film our heritage.

Also external to the organisation, the HO liaises with local business groups, churches, farmers and, of course, and most relevant to today, to voluntary groups, like Tidy Towns, birdwatchers and nature conservation bodies, community development groups, historical societies and arts organisations.

Heritage is really whatever we value that we have inherited or received from the past and which we cannot reproduce or re-make for ourselves. It includes landscape and seascapes, streetscapes and townscapes, buildings, monuments, objects in museums and heritage centres. It also includes non-tangible heritage – information and ideas about the past that exist only in documents or in people’s minds. As well as the whole area of cultural heritage, things that people have made, there is our natural heritage of wildlife and biodiversity, which is affected by people but which is also outside of

and independent of people. Natural heritage overlaps with ‘cultural heritage’ e.g. people plant hedges or woods, change the course of rivers and drain wetlands but wildlife also recreates itself.

A major benefit of heritage is quality of life. Heritage gives people a sense of place, of belonging, of who they are and where they have come from. Engagement with heritage promotes active citizenship. During the COVID-19 lockdowns having nice places nearby, where we could walk and experience space and peace and quiet. Attractive built and natural heritage also attracts people to any area, whether as tourists, new residents or inward investors, bringing money and business into an area. It helps to have great communications, like Louth has, but attractive towns, coasts, hills and countryside contribute to Louth’s attractiveness too.

The conservation of heritage relies to a large degree on active citizens, or volunteers. The Heritage Officer helps promote national schemes within County Louth and is always keen to recruit new volunteers. Volunteers are needed to record wildlife sightings with the National Biodiversity Data Centre https://records.biodiversityireland.ie/start-recording and to survey beaches for wildlife, litter and other problems during September and October each year. See CoastWatch for further details: http://coastwatch.org/europe/survey/.

The Heritage Officer only has a small annual budget of €20,000 however there have been substantial increases in central government funding for heritage in the last couple of years.

These include:

The Community Monuments Fund set up to provide some support to conserve monuments. Three grants were obtained in Louth this year, totalling €49,000, one for works on a section of Drogheda’s town wall and two for conservation studies of old, ruined towerhouses. Only heritage officers can submit applications to the fund, so, if you want to apply for funding, you need to contact the Heritage Officer at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , bearing in mind the small size of grants available. The deadline for applications in 2021 was Friday 30th April.

National Biodiversity Action Plan Fund which provides grants for biodiversity projects. Again, all applications must be submitted by a county heritage officer. Deadline in 2021 was Friday 26th March. Louth obtained eight grants, totalling €32,700 in that year.

Heritage Council Community grants. These are small grants of a few hundred to a few thousand Euro, given out by the Heritage Council. You apply directly to the HC and the Heritage Officer has no role in deciding who gets what. However it may be useful for the Heritage Officer to write a letter supporting your project. Deadline in 2021 was Friday 19th March.

National Built Heritage Investment Scheme this is administered by the Planning Section within Louth County Council. 10 grants totalling €82,380 were awarded in 2021 – full details of these grants are available here. Deadline in 2021 was January, extended to 22nd February 2021.