Sounds like you want to read through https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/The-Law-on-... to tone down the indignation a little. It's a perfectly fine law: if you use a metal detector on your farm and you happen to find archeological metal, you're not breaking any laws. But now you do have a duty to report that find, and you can't keep using your metal detector and stabbing the ground with a shovel when it beeps because then you'd be intentionally disturbing and possibly destroying a site of potentially historical significance.