Beal na Bláth, the Ardagh Chalice and Clonmacnoise are no longer significant merely because of their cultural and historical import.
In the Celtic Tiger colour scheme of things, they have also become shades for a leading paint manufacturer, a conference on Irish heritage has been told.
Prof Patrick Duffy, of NUI Maynooth department of geography, cited this as an example as the pervasiveness of the "heritage industry".
The dropping of the word "heritage" in the recent Government reshuffle after the general election was cause for concern, according to Dr Catherine Kelly of Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology.
She claimed this had made heritage less visible on the national agenda and the fact that it is now under the remit of two government departments would cause fragmentation where governance was concerned.
"Heritage is not simply about consumption and commodification. It is not just about tourism and quick money. It is also about people's definition of themselves," she said.
The conference on Ireland's Heritages: Critical Perspectives on Consumption, Method and Memory was run by the heritage studies department of the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, in collaboration with the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA), NUI Maynooth, and the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages (AICH) at the University of Ulster.
"We realise that informing policy makers and society at large is a complicated process," said Dr Rob Kitchin, NIRSA director. "It is by disseminating knowledge and broadening the parameters of teaching that real change will be effected."