Cadw-owned Land

Part of 3. Questions to the Minister for International Relations and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 3:27 pm on 26 June 2019.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas Independent 3:27, 26 June 2019

Thank you for making those remarks. I have not yet seen a detailed report of those discussions, but I can confirm that they have taken place. The issue that we face, and I’ve been to the site, of course—to Caerleon and other historic sites—. The difficulty with these sites is, if you fence them in, then that doesn’t make them attractive for people to visit. It’s a balance, always, between the minimum protection required for sites to ensure that they’re not misused and the deterrent that it would form for people if sites were, as it where, overprotected. So, I still have some faith in the potential of education and, in particular, the involvement of young people in conservation activities themselves—I can see that my colleague the education Minister is nodding—and the various programmes that we have now with young ambassadors and young apprentices within Cadw and in other parts of my responsibilities are ways of introducing young people to the habits of conservation so that they don’t feel the need to cause any damage to what are, after all, very historic sites.