Whatever the Heather - Village Magazine

62 April 2015

OT that it seems to matter but

Heather Humphreys is the

Minister for Arts, Heritage

and the Gaeltacht. A stranger

to a national proﬁle she came

from nowhere to succeed Jimmy Deeni-

han, the only minister to lose that rank,

in July last year.

Actually, she had been elected to Dáil

éireann in the 2011 general election as

the ﬁrst woman ever to be elected for Fine

Gael in the Cavan-Monaghan constitu-

ency. She had been Mayor of Monaghan

County Council in 2009, having previ-

ously chaired the Council’s Strategic

Policy Committee on Planning and Eco-

nomic Development and also served on

the Council’s An Coiste Gaeilge, though

she spoke no Irish.

Humphreys was educated at St Aid-

an’s Comprehensive School in Cootehill,

County Cavan, married farmer Eric

Humphreys has two daughters, one of

whom was involved in a bad car crash

last year, and lives on a farm in Aghabog.

She worked with Ulster Bank and then

became Manager of Cootehill Credit

Union.

Before being appointed as Minister

for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht,

she was a member of the Joint Oireachtas

Committee on Finance, Public Expendi-

ture & Reform, the Joint Administration

Committee and the Organisation for

Security and Co-Operation in Europe

(OSCE). Her mentor was Seymour Craw-

ford TD and Humphreys and Labour’s

Jan O’Sullivan are currently the only

Protestant TDs in the cabinet. None of

this, even the last bit, shouts Arts, Her-

itage, Gaeltacht.

According to her website: “Heather’s

ﬁnancial experience in both personal

and business matters combined with a

farming background makes her a strong

voice for the people of Cavan and Mona-

ghan”. So far so humdrum in the cabinet

of the man who wants to make Ireland

the best little country in the world to do

business.

But there’s more: “She is acutely

aware of the challenges facing indige-

nous industries and small business and

understands the importance of cash

ﬂow to businesses and has made this

issue one of her main priorities as a new

TD. Heathers [sic] approach to politics

focuses on common sense, honesty and

practicality. This goes hand in hand with

her businesslike attitude and a willing-

ness to roll up the sleeves and get the job

done”.

A fair observation is that added to her

vapid track record she does not appear

to have any vision or ideology (outside

improving cash-ﬂow for business).

She is best known for her ignominious

performance in the controversy over the

appointment of failed local election can-

didate, John McNulty to the board of the

Museum of Modern Ar t (IMMA) just days

before he was announced as Fine Gael’s

nominee for the Seanad by-election last

year. Humphreys gave a faltering per-

formance in a doorstep interview with

journalists and refused to reveal who

within Fine Gael told her to put McNulty

on the IMMA board.

More endearing tales are that she was

“absolutely shocked” to be appointed a

Minister and that she asked her Secre-

tary-General to call her Heather when

she ﬁrst met him. He refused and of

course she quickly yielded: “Well if that’s

the way you do it, that’s ﬁne with me .

And then he goes, ‘Yes, Minister’”.

With the Arts Council dishing out the

cash to the luvvies, and Junior Minis-

ter Joe MacHugh belatedly brushing up

on his Irish and doing the Gaeltacht bit,

Humphreys is uniquely lumbered with

the unpopular but nonetheless serious

legal responsibility for Heritage.

While she seems, after a slow start,

to be addressing the Rising centenary,

through the National Parks and Wildlife

Service she is also required to enforce

the fractious, and more importantly,

tedious EU Habitats and Birds Direc-

tives, and to facilitate Irish compliance

with the UN Convention on Biological

Diversity.

On top of this she is charged with

application of the Council of Europe

Heather Humphreys

isn’t that interested in

her brief.

By Michael Smith

Whatever

the

Heather

understands

the importance

of cash ﬂow

to businesses

and has made

this issue one

of her main

priorities as a

new TD

“

ENVIRONMENT Heather Humphreys

April 2015 63

ENVIRONMENT Heather Humphreys

agriculture policy are accelerating cli-

mate change and the destruction of

habitats, especially wetlands.

Iconic Irish bird species such as the

curlew and hen harrier are in danger.

Peat extraction for electricit y generation

as well as for horticulture and to serve

the mushroom industry remains largely

unregulated. Action is being taken over

the cutting of raised bog SACs (but not

blanket bogs) only because of legal pro-

ceedings by the European Commission,

itself under pressure from NGOs. In her

statement at the time of the budget,

Humphreys betrayed her agenda:

“The Department and the Peatlands

Council will continue to work closely

with turf cutters who are required to

cease cutting turf on Ireland’s 53 Spe-

cial Area of Conservation raised bogs

so as to ensure that their needs are met

through compensation or through relo-

cation to a new bog where possible. I

remain determined to address this issue

in a way that is fair, balanced, and sup-

portive of those aﬀected”.

Her focus clearly is the bog-cutters,

not the bogs. The overall sense is of

an eﬀort to assuage the pre-modern

turfcutters represented by climate-

change naysayer Michael Fitzmaurice,

TD.

Specific Ministerial interventions

in planning issues are rare. The UK

company Westland has unearthed a

prehistoric wooden trackway on an

unregulated horticultural peat extrac-

tion site in Mayne, Co Westmeath. The

DAHG is dithering on the required

action to make the trackway a National

Monument and require that any further

interference be subject to Environmen-

tal Impact Assessment.

When the historic contents of Bantry

House were put up for auction last year

the Heritage Department went into

hiding. While the auction was suspended

because of a licence issue, the future of

a collection intrinsic to one of the coun-

try’s prime heritage tourism attractions

festers unresolved.

One inevitable exception to the down-

grading of heritage goes under the

heading “Commemorations”. “2016 is

my number one priority”, Humphreys

has said. Seven capital projects are

underway for the 1916 Centennial. A

new interpretive centre at the GPO, ‘Wit-

ness to History’ is expected to attract

up to 300,000 visitors per year. There

is to be development at Pearse’s Cottage

in Ros Muc, Galway and at Kilmainham

Conventions on archaeology, architec-

tural heritage and landscape, and with

the National Museum, Library and Gal-

lery and other cultural institutions.

Concern or action on nature con-

servation have been startlingly absent

since her appointment as Minister.

Her vanishing if gamey predecessor

Jimmy Deenihan – now Minister for

the diaspora or some such - remarked

during his time that: “Part of me wishes

that the portfolio had been kept to arts,

sports and tourism”.

Heather Humphreys has gone one

better and acted as if it already had been.

Jobs, jobs and the odd forklift truck fac-

tory in Monaghan are the staples of her

social media outings. The occasional

commemoration here. Maybe a bit of

1916, there. The apex of her tenure is

represented by gushings about sitting

next to the former First Lady in New York

on St Patrick’s Day: “what an honour to

meet with Hillary Clinton” etc.

Where heritage issues impose on

her busy schedule it is usually some

soft focused divagation like preserv-

ing an historic corrugated iron church

in…Monaghan. What the new Minister

really appears to love is attending nice

arts events around the country.

Indeed those following her Twitter

account may be confused and think that

she is a junior functionary working for

Richard Bruton. In mid-March An Taisce

reviewed Minister Humphreys’ previous

200 tweets – going back more than 150

days. It discovered that the Minister had

mentioned nature or wildlife topics only

twice. The lonely tweets addressed the

Rural Development Programme and

the Deer Management Framework. An

Taisce put these ﬁndings to the Minis-

ter via Twitter, who responded “Lots of

good work going on. For eg this week I

secured Govt approval for publication of

National Landscape Strategy”.

In early March 2015 the EU European

Environment Agency published a report

on Europe’s wide-ranging biodiversity

loss, explaining how 25% of species are

threatened with extinction.

The main drivers for this were iden-

tiﬁed as habitat loss, urban expansion,

agricultural intensiﬁcation and climate

change. Ireland has no strategies to deal

with these pressing threats. A weak cli-

mate act is passing uselessly through the

Oireachtas.

The 50% increase in milk produc-

tion and other agri-business targets

under the meaty Food Harvest 2020

Gaol, the National Concert Hall, the Mil-

itary Archives, the Tenement Museum

and Richmond Barracks.

In comparison to the more fashiona-

ble and self-serving Irish contemporary

“Arts” world, the great cultural institu-

tions of the National Museum, National

Library and National Gallery were sav-

agely cut after the 2008 crash. Only in

2015 were there no further cuts and

indeed in the end Humphreys secured

an additional €2m in funding for the

National Cultural Institutions as part of

the Revised Budgetary Estimates.

The Gallery is ﬁnally getting a long

overdue major refurbishment and tem-

perature and humidity control, but it

is unclear if there will be a staﬀ budget

to reopen all the rooms next year. The

Museum is on a ﬁnancial precipice

having to consider admission charges.

The Library languishes way behind

international standards in security and

the curating of collections.

Perhaps most dramatically, when

news broke of the Department of Agri-

culture’s plundering of €400m from

the agri-budget earmarked for nature

conservation areas Humphreys main-

tained a telling and time-serving silence.

Her politicking in any event would be no

match for Minister Simon Coveney’s.

There is a dearth of vision in the

Department. Its website lists only ﬁve

Ministerial speeches in the last two

years. For the same period the Depart-

ment for the Environment, for example,

lists 22.

Ineﬀective action and anodyne (non)

‘Strategy’ documents are the hall-

mark of Humphreys’ Department. The

National Landscape Strategy is care-

fully framed not to oﬀend the zealous

bungalow-builder, the IFA or conifer-

fetishising Coillte. ‘Our Ocean Wealth

– Towards an Integrated Marine Plan for

Ireland’, does not propose catch limits.

The Draft Peatlands Strategy currently

progressing through her Department

with destination the Minister’s rubber

stamp ignores the scientiﬁc advice and

targets provided by the EPA on climate

emissions in its 2011 report “Bogland

– Sustainable Management of Peatlands

in Ireland”, Instead the ‘Strategy’ lacks

timetables or targets.

The 20-year Strategy for the Irish

language has been underfunded and

not implemented even by government

departments. A recommendation to

appoint a full Government Minister for

the language has been ignored. •

Her

Department’s

website lists

only ﬁve

Ministerial

speeches in

the last two

years. For

the same

period the

Department

for the

Environment

lists 22

“