2019 Treasure Act Public Consultation: Northern Ireland

Readers of this blog will know that, when it comes to artefact hunting and collecting in the UK, I am mainly concerned about the situation in England and Wales and the workings of the Portable Antiquities Scheme as a means of mitigating (or not) loss of archaeological information through artefact hunting and collecting. The situation in Northern Ireland is even less easy to get hold of information on, I get the feeling that it does not really 'work' all that well either.  So I am not going to discuss this in any detail here today. But if I was an archaeologist working in or personally concerned about these issues (I must admit, I've not come across any NI archaeobloggers) I'd be pretty miffed about the marginal way the region has been treated in this consultation. Surely the way forward here would have been not to attempt to wedge it into a document that seems to be PAS-focussed, but give the region its own consultation document. Perhaps Brexit sensitivities are a reason why this was not attempted?  As the introduction states:

In Northern Ireland, the Historic Monuments and Archaeological Objects (NI) Order 1995 prohibits searching for archaeological objects without the permission of the Department of the Environment in Northern Ireland and there is also a different administrative process.

But then the text skips on to two pages on 'The Portable Antiquities Scheme in England and Wales', 'The Treasure Secretariat at the British Museum', 'The treasure process [in England and Wales]', and then the next two pages are England an Wales focussed, before we learn (p. 5)' Culture is a devolved responsibility, however the Secretary of State is responsible for the Act in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. There are differences between the nations, based on the different legal frameworks for treasure and on the volume of finds found. We hope to have responses from interested parties that will reflect the variety of experiences'. Again, we learn that ' Northern Ireland has its own Code to reflect its different regulations on archaeological digging' (p.6 and p. 12) but then on p 15, the reference to where it can be accessed is omitted from the published text (!).