A new campaign has been launched by the National Monuments Service has launched a new campaign asking landowners to "check before you dig".
Landowners and farmers are being asked to check their land before they change the land use or begin land clearance.
National Monument Service archaeologist Anne Carey said an online map which can be found on gov.ie, known as the historic environment viewer, can be accessed by private landowners.
"It will bring them to a map of Ireland which shows all known archaeological monuments in the country.
"They're shown by a red dot, and they can click on the red dot and will find information that has been provided by the archaeological survey of Ireland who are also in the National Monuments Service."
She said there are layers of historic mapping which show the landscape of Ireland before the famine.
She said in the second edition, there is a 25 inch map which is a larger scale and the third edition brings you right up to the 20th Century.
Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne, Ms Carey said the unit she is based in - the Monument Protection Unit - responds to reports of threat and damaged monuments.
"These can be any form of report from members of the public and the assistance and cooperation of the public is crucial to the protection of archaeological heritage and we are always very grateful for calls that come in."
She said they attend sites where there have been reports of graffiti and vandalism and they also liaise with landowners who express concerns for example about the collapse of the wall of a church or a castle on lands in their ownership.
"We also go out to sites which are maybe the subject of ground works and that is where this campaign came from.
"It's a campaign aimed at farmers... they're collectively the largest owners of archaeological monuments in the country."
She said they are noticing that there are two main areas where there is inadvertent damage to monuments on farmland.
She said the first is where a new landowner might not be familiar with the area, they may not be from the parish, they have purchased the land and they prepare the land which sometimes involves land clearance and land reclamation.
"They won't be familiar with the land and unless they check before they dig, they won't know if a monument is there necessarily, if it's a low level monument."
Ms Carey said the Community Monuments Fund is one of the greatest initiatives ever to be introduced into Irish archaeology and Irish architecture heritage and since 2020 it provides 100% funding to private owners and local authorities who are also custodians of a lot of Ireland's national heritage in graveyards and medieval churches around the country.
"The Community Monuments Fund offers this funding and support to private owners over three streams, so it can be conservation, or the preparation of conservation management plans or even allowing access or interpretation of archaeological monuments.
"And it allows them to watch a monument that they love, be put back into a condition where it is stable and it's able to withstand the next few hundred years.
"And they are also engaging with ourselves in the National Monuments Service and with the local authorities who administer the fund on behalf of the department."
