The Heritage Council ( Irish : An Comhairle Oidhreachta ) is an organisation created by the Irish government to "engage, educate and advocate to develop a wider understanding of the vital contribution that our heritage makes to our social, environmental and economic well-being."
6-511: The Heritage Council was established under the Heritage Act 1995. Its current CEO is Virginia Teehan . The Council's purview 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 organizes
12-616: A Master of Philosophy . She is a qualified archivist and former Chair of the Archives and Records Association Ireland. In that capacity she is credited as having successfully lobbied for the introduction of legislation to protect local authority archives. In 2018 Teehan completed an MBA (University College Cork). She has acted as director of Cultural Projects at UCC, and as director of the Hunt Museum in Limerick . During her time at
18-654: The Hunt Museum Teehan successfully led the organization through a government enquiry established following an allegation made by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Paris that items from the Hunt collection were looted during the Nazi era. Teehan established a major provenance research project which proved ultimately that the allegations were unfounded. She was appointed by minister Síle de Valera to
24-693: The IWTN's education programme won the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Award. The Heritage Council established the Museums Standards Programme for Ireland (MSPI) in 2007, to benchmark and promote professional standards in the care of collections and to recognise through accreditation the achievement of those standards within the Irish museum sector. As of 2020, 43 museums have been fully accredited through
30-715: The MSPI programme. Virginia Teehan Virginia Teehan is an Irish art historian, writer, curator and archivist who has led the Irish Heritage Council ( An Comhairle Oidhreachta ) since January 2019. She was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2022. She grew up in Kilkenny , and studied at University College Cork (UCC) where she attained an bachelor's degree in arts, and later at Trinity College Dublin where she earned
36-784: The annual Heritage Week in Ireland. It also has a grants scheme. In 2005, the Heritage Council formed the Irish Walled Towns Network (IWTN). The role of the IWTN is to help the walled towns of Ireland become better places in which to live, work and visit. The network does this through providing grants for medieval town wall repairs, secondly, by providing grants for community festivals and heritage interpretation, thirdly, training community groups on how best to use their place's heritage and finally, by coordinating research and publishing advisory documents. In 2013,
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