The Giant's Causeway is protected by the North's national trust, but when will the Republic get a trust of its own? Mary Russell reports
What have Lithuania, Greece, Macedonia and the Republic of Ireland got in common? No, this is nothing to do with football or the Eurovision Song Contest. The answer is that, out of all the countries in Europe, these four do not have a national trust. To be more specific, the Republic of Ireland does not have a body which safeguards places of major architectural, historical and environmental interest, holding them in trust and in perpetuity, for the enjoyment and enlightenment of the citizens.
Across the Border there is the National Trust Northern Ireland. It has taken a number of sites under its all-embracing wing, buying them and then leasing them to managers who look after them and make them available to the public.
The case of the Giant's Causeway in Co Antrim is a fine example. A few years ago, the hotel there, the Causeway Hotel, came on the market and one prospective buyer expressed his intention of developing the site as a leisure complex with holiday homes, car parks and all manner of things that didn't quite fit with the wild and uniquely maritime aspect of the causeway. Many local people as well as lovers of the north Antrim coast were therefore relieved when the National Trust stepped in, offered the owner the market price for the hotel and then leased it back to his family at an economic rent.
This means that the area around the Giant's Causeway is now protected and the lovely old hotel with its gentle aura of times past - it was established in 1836 - remains in the stewardship of the Armstrong family with the third generation, Johanna, now managing the hotel under the watchful eye of her father and grandmother. Thus the hotel can both give employment to local people and generate an income for the National Trust and, perhaps most important of all, is retained in trust for the people of Northern Ireland forever.
Since this is an amenity which we in the Republic might consider part of our own heritage, why is it that there is no such body this side of the Border? Or indeed, better still, a cross-Border body?
We have An Taisce, which many consider, erroneously, to be Ireland's national trust and which indeed is an off-shoot of the pre-1921 National Trust but the fact remains that Ireland does not have a well-thought-through programme of heritage and environmental protection and promotion which is why there is now a growing body of people calling on the Government to remedy this omission.
The idea is not new. In September 2003, the then minister for the environment, Martin Cullen, undertook to examine the whole business. This decision followed a report on the future of Irish historic houses made by Terence Dooley who teaches at the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates, at NUI, Maynooth. The Dooley Report was commissioned by the Georgian Society and the Department of the Environment, and Martin Cullen's successor, Dick Roche, took up the baton by undertaking to submit a memorandum to the Oireachtas in March this year.
But with the Dáil finishing up for the summer yesterday, it seems that the idea has been put on the long finger. The next Cabinet meeting is on July 25th and a spokesman for Dick Roche's office says it is unlikely to be discussed at that meeting. The lack of action is a grave disappointment to those bodies who have been active in promoting the establishment of a national trust, the two most prominent being the Georgian Society and An Taisce.
PART OF THE problem stems from a still-divided Ireland, with arguments ranging to and fro about what is and what is not considered an "Irish" heritage. As Desmond FitzGerald the Knight of Glin points out: "There still lingers, in some parts of Irish society, the traditional dislike of the Big House."
John Ducie, chair of An Taisce, thinks this is something of the past: "We don't have to squabble any longer about what is our heritage," he says.
Finally, there is ongoing discussion about the structure of such a trust: should it be financed by government or by membership?
Ducie favours the latter: "There should be three elements to any proposed trust: voluntary membership, nominated bodies such as the Georgian Society, BirdWatch Ireland, possibly Coillte - although that is a semi-state setup - and thirdly, there should be a legislative structure. It must be a voluntary, non-governmental authority set up by an Act and not incorporated under company law. This way, it would be protected from things like takeovers. And as a statutory body, it would not be subject to tax, enjoying the same status as, say, the National Gallery."
FitzGerald adds to this: "And being a set up as a charity would encourage people to donate."
Ducie points out that An Taisce gets its annual income of €400,000 from membership subscriptions and donations, augmented by environmental projects which are part-funded by local businesses and local authorities. He is opposed to the idea of a trust coming under government control: "Lissadell," he says, "was a classic example: a site of major historical importance, the estate full of wildlife, the house itself the family home of a founder of the State, and yet the Government said it was too costly a project to undertake. They said it would cost €30 million. The price of the house was €4 million and the rest would have gone on doing it up, but over a very short space of time which is a costly way of doing things. Now, if a trust had been in place, it could have spread the cost over a number of years - careful husbandry and good stewardship are the keys - and the resources of the diaspora could have been tapped into. That way, you can afford to run a number of projects at once, not tie everything up in one major project."
THERE IS ALSO the vexed question of what a trust should concern itself with. Should it focus on the historic Big House - which seems to be the preference of the Minister - or on other aspects of Ireland's heritage such as its environmental wealth as well as dwellings and workplaces which might be of social importance but possibly not as architecturally elegant as the traditional Big House.
"We need to look at the vernacular architecture," says John Ducie, "and preserve the way of life of ordinary people. In Britain, the National Trust is doing conservation work on Glasgow slums." It has also saved and is managing the historic Patterson's Spade Mill at Templepatrick, Co Antrim, where two employees continue to make spades in the traditional way.
FitzGerald, who is president of the Georgian Society, which has been so successful in saving countless threatened great houses and indeed smaller buildings, recognises the competing interests of grand and humble but does not see them as areas of conflict: "A national trust shouldn't only concern itself with the elite," he says. "It could be involved with a park or gardens or a village. Even a warehouse. I certainly don't see a trust as a sort of resting place for the Anglo-Irish."
On the question of financing, he says: "There isn't the ethos here, as there is in the UK and the US, of giving, so initially there will have to be government investment. Then we need to look at tourism and the income that can generate. We should wake up to this. Tourism isn't just about golf courses.
"What has been encouraging is the fact that Bertie Ahern wrote such an excellent preface to the Dooley Report," FitzGerald adds. "It was a spark of genuine interest maybe because his father was a gardener. Anyway, it gave it a great send-off and the Georgian Society welcomed that enormously."
• The Giant's Causeway is a World Heritage site owned by the National Trust Northern Ireland. Tel: 048-97510721
• The Causeway Hotel: 048-2073 1210
• In last Saturday's article on Westport House, the mention of Col John Browne should have referred to his Jacobitism. The error occurred in the editing process