I am honoured to be before the committee on what I regard as a signal day in the history of the National Museum of Ireland. I am as conscious of the aspirations, contributions and mostly the disappointments of the eleven directors who have preceded me since 1877 as I am hopeful for the fortunes of those who will follow me. This is a rare opportunity to give an account of our stewardship to the Oireachtas in response to the Comptroller and Auditor General's serious findings.
Our vision is that the National Museum will become a world class institution that promotes the widest understanding and appreciation of Ireland's distinctive culture and natural history, and their place in the wider world. The museum is more than a repository of the nation's treasures, and the storehouse and exhibition centre of the portable artefacts of every period of our history and the natural history specimens that define our heritage and explain the physical landscape of the country. It holds in trust the most extensive record of the island by reference to every rock, mineral, animal, fish and insect that make up its life and landscape and of every artefact of the portable material remains of every period of man's presence in the last 10,000 years. The museum is a unique cultural institution; it is a national treasure in itself.
The museum sits on four sites, three in Dublin and one in Castlebar — it is the only national cultural institution with a branch outside the capital. In addition, we have collections stored at Inchicore and Beggar's Bush, Dublin; Lanesborough, County Roscommon, which is a working space of our laboratory rather than a store, and Daingean, County Offaly.
The National Museum is by far the largest of the national cultural institutions. It is also the national institution most concerned with the island of Ireland and its collections are the most wide ranging culturally, geographically and chronologically and the most varied according to the materials of which they are composed. For example, the archaeological holdings on Kildare Street include the world famous pre-historic gold and Celtic ornaments and the early Christian treasures of Ireland, unique collections of wooden objects from bogs and artefacts from Viking Dublin, some of which I dug up. This collection also includes non-Irish, mainly classical archaeological material, as well as a celebrated South Sea island ethnographical collection from the Pacific, Africa and the Americas, some of which comes from Captain Cook's voyages.
Our decorative arts display collections at Collins Barracks include the national collection of the applied arts, also our collection of historical objects, collections as varied as silver, furniture, the personal collection of the Irish designer Eileen Gray, an oriental collection — scheduled to go on display in November — the historical collection of 1916 and the War of Independence, and much more.
The Irish Folklife County Life Museum at Castlebar consists of items, mainly traditional arts and crafts and details of the associated lifestyle and beliefs dating from the early 20th century but rooted in much earlier times.
There was an accident at the Natural History Museum on Merrion Street last year when a stairs collapsed. It contains specimens of every beast and insect in Ireland and every rock and mineral, as well as comprehensive comparative collections from around the world.
I give this very summary account of the museum's collections to emphasise their extent and variety, the concerns of our core work and the challenges their management pose in so many ways. I give this as background and context because it was not and could not have been included in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. While I do not seek credit, nor do any of my colleagues, for any of our achievements, without the apportionment of due credit, the Comptroller and Auditor General's report could be construed as negative. I am mindful that the Comptroller and Auditor General's report No. 62 is a special report on "the performance" of the museum. Please remember the word "performance" as I make my response to the thrust of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report.
The collections at all four sites, unlike some of the other institutions which make up the national cultural institutions, almost continue to be added to on a daily basis. In archaeology this arises from the requirements of our national monuments legislation in regard to all archaeological discoveries which have to be reported and because all finds from excavations have to be brought to the museum. Acquisitions also arise from the fieldwork investigations. Items and specimens for all branches are also acquired through donation, purchase and at auction. Collections are cared for, researched, published and exhibited by curators who are supported by documentation staff, conservators and technicians.
The museum's responsibilities in respect of acquisitions are enshrined in several Acts, notably the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2004. The Director of the Museum is also mentioned by office in several other Acts.
The museum has a very long history dating back over 200 years. Many of the problems highlighted by the Comptroller and Auditor General stem from this long inheritance and, until very recently, a total history of neglect, particularly since the foundation of the State. Despite the fact that we have had many distinguished and learned Ministers of all parties, we have been grossly neglected until the eleventh hour.
Many of the museum's collections are old and poorly documented as a result. We have objects such as fish and a definition of, say, an eel in Ireland which was described and defined during the time of Henry Grattan in our collections in a tank. Can one imagine how poor the documentation would be on an object such as that? Many of the National Museum's collections are held in old buildings, buildings which we are lucky to have. I am delighted the Government gave us Collins Barracks, but there are the attendant problems of maintenance and conservation.
The breadth of work encompassed by the National Museum staff is enormous. It is my privilege to head up a most varied team of administrators, IT specialists, financial and personnel specialists, office people, archaeologists, natural history experts such as geologists, an entomologist, that is, an insect expert and a marine biologist, social historians, ethnologists, art historians, military historians, folklife scholars, educationalists, conservators, technicians, restorers, security people, marketing people, a photographer, graphic artists, documenters, store keepers, shop and catering people, as well as buildings and security people.
The director — the post I have the honour to hold — is the keeper of the nation's treasures. He is the official witness of the nation's antiquity and cultural identity, and must be seen to be so. He is the principal official in the cultural area to whom the Government and the public may defer and upon whose advice they can rely. He is paid for his knowledge and experience and for his leadership, but mainly for his judgment. In this regard, the Chairman will possibly know of my informed stands, for example, on the threats to our heritage posed by developments at Durrow Abbey and Tara and of the stand taken by the former Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, regarding my legal right to advise the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government on these matters.
The director has to lead and manage a team of 200 to collect, protect, conserve, catalogue, study, display, publish, explain and give access to the multiplicity of collections which constitute the National Museum of Ireland. He must win financial and other support for his successful running of the place and attract the maximum numbers of visitors to inspect and absorb the messages of the museum's displays and facilities.
The directorship has evolved considerably, even in my time. I had a relatively passive scholarly role but it has evolved into a more proactive one. In my 37 years in the National Museum, 20 of them as director, the museum has changed out of all recognition. In 1972, the year after I joined the staff, the museum had 180,000 visitors. Last year, as my colleague, Mr. Con Haugh, said, we broke new ground by having more than 1 million visitors. That is an incredible leap forward in the visitor numbers to our attractions. One of the reasons was our exhibition of the Sea Stallion, of our work on which the committee will be aware. It was a gift from the Danish Government to Dublin for one year. It was a museum to museum gesture from the Danes. It was a tribute to the National Museum, having done all the excavations in Wood Quay and Viking Dublin.
In spite of the National Museum having more than 1 million visitors last year, we lost the facility of our Natural History Museum building for half of the year. We had two sites but now have four. The display area has increased from 57,000 sq. ft. in 1972 to 127,500 sq. ft. and the number of objects on display from 14,000 to 31,000. Staff numbers have increased from 64 when I became director in 1988 to 200 now; as recently as 1994 there were only 67. We did not have remotely enough people to undertake the documentation programme on the scale to which the Comptroller and Auditor General refers. We could have done little else had we concentrated on that.
In the past decade and a half or so the facilities, resources, exhibitions and management structures of the National Museum have been revolutionised — I use that word advisedly — from what they were. We have opened two new sites, Collins Barracks in 1997 and Turlough Park, Castlebar in 2001. New National Museum departments of registration, facilities, conservation, marketing and education have been established where there was none previously. Entire collections have been moved, new stores have been created and existing storage facilities upgraded. The output of academic papers and monographs has increased and by having its works popularised on television, radio and the print media the National Museum is at the centre of public consciousness in Ireland and beyond as never before. Our presence here today underlines that and we appreciate this opportunity.
In the 1980s the National Museum had to send the Derrynaflan chalice and hoard to the British Museum to be conserved; we could not polish it at the time as we did not have the facilities to do so. Today we have a world-class conservation laboratory of our own capable of conserving a much trickier artefact, the 8th-century psalter from Faddan More, County Tipperary, which was found last year. Any one of these tasks would have been daunting; to have accomplished them all within a short period of time — even if I say so myself and I say it in the presence of my staff who have helped me to do this — is remarkable and something of which I am intensely proud. I am also thankful for the efforts of my colleagues who did it with me and the Governments, Ministers and civil servants who in recent years provided the resources. I hope they will continue to do so.
We are acutely aware of the National Museum's shortcomings in the areas of collections management, access and governance as reported by the Comptroller and Auditor General in report No. 62. We acknowledge them and welcome this report and its recommendations, many of which we had identified and were trying to tackle ourselves. We do not and did not have the staff to do everything the Comptroller and Auditor General says we should have done. After 37 years, I know this better than anyone. However, what were we to do? We could only make the best of available resources, balancing all the demands of the jobs I mentioned while at the same time opening two new branches, putting on displays of heritage and culture to attract visitors, thereby playing a significant part in our national economy, one that justifies further investment in our works, buildings and facilities. Perhaps, if the Comptroller and Auditor General had spoken to me more extensively at the beginning of this process I could have explained all this better to him. We have spread our limited resources as productively and tellingly as possible.
It is probably mainly my fault that we concentrated our limited manpower resources on the opening of museums and the establishment of exhibitions and related education programmes. This is because I believe the National Museum belongs to every man woman and child in Ireland, rich and poor, with whom we must share its collections and who are the people who pay for it. Ironically, we had long ago set aside 2008 as a housekeeping year in which we would take stock of our resources and concentrate more exclusively on collections management and on the upgrading of registration and storage.
It is to the great credit of the Comptroller and Auditor General that his highlighting of these areas has added to our arguments and justifications for additional staff for decanting natural history and documenting the whole National Museum and especially for the improvement and expansion of our storage facilities. I am delighted to say that we were given sanction recently for the requisite numbers of decanting and documentation staff, that the positions of our registration and facilities leaders have been upgraded, that at long last the long overdue position of our head of education, which I had been refused many times, has been sanctioned and the embarrassing situation of having highly qualified scientist-conservators in our laboratory who are badly paid has now been remedied with suitable upgrades.
With the backing of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, we are negotiating with our colleagues in the OPW for the acquisition of suitable storage facilities near Dublin, which, if we get them, are very well appointed; they will be able to accommodate appropriate staff and researchers and are commodious enough to eventually allow public access to our collections. This facility, if we get it, will provide ideal accommodation for the collections currently housed in poor condition, to which reference was made by Mr. Buckley, or in spaces that would be better used as galleries, and would constitute a collections resource centre with curatorial offices, a library, archive and high quality research facilities, and provide access and space to enable us to plan and set out layouts for all new displays.
This will accommodate our natural history collections during their decanting from Merrion Street and allow the full restoration and refurbishment of their old building on Merrion Street — the oldest part of the National Museum is the Natural History Museum — which will retain its unique cabinet style Edwardian ambience. The premises in question that we still have not got but are hopeful of getting — I thank Mr. Con Haugh for his support and hope the OPW will be generous and kind enough to give us this space and I have every faith in its officials — will be large enough to accommodate properly for the first time, with the co-operation of our colleagues and friends in the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, the archaeological finds from the last ten years, which we have not been able to take in, as is our obligation, with the relevant archives. I have inspected the accommodation and it will be able to cater for this intake for the next 30 or 40 years, thereby changing the whole course of the National Museum's history and any perception hitherto of State neglect in regard to our archaeological and museological heritage.
I am pleased that we have addressed many of the other issues raised in the report. An acquisitions and disposals policy has been completed and approved by the board of the National Museum. We are also addressing how best to extend our opening hours and improve our service to the public. In addition, our website has been completely redesigned with increased public access facilities in mind. We are still tweaking it but it is up and running.
On the operational and management side of the National Museum, our statement of strategy has been prepared and here it is, hot off the presses. It covers the years 2008-12. We have also completed a risk management policy, which has been compiled with the help of the IPA. That has also been approved by our board. Considerable progress has been made on developing a collections disaster plan, which will be integrated into our existing emergency evacuation procedures.
In addition to all the other work we have done in recent years, we have compiled policies on human remains, conservation, loans, education and child protection. We have a customer care charter and a human resource strategy is being worked on, in addition to policies on travel, procurement and risks. We have so many policies that I sound like a broken down insurance man, but we have done all these in the recent past.
I welcome the report, which not only coincides with what I believe to be a revolution in the way the National Museum can deliver on its duties and services to this country, but which has already played a part in delivering the tools to achieve that revolution. I thank the Chairman and other members of the committee, as well as the Comptroller and Auditor General. I respectfully ask them not to go too far away lest the tools of which I have spoken should not be as fully or permanently delivered as we would wish. After all, we want to impress them on their next visit to the National Museum. Rath Dé ar an obair agus ar aghaidh le Ard-Mhúsaem na hÉireann.
With the Chairman's permission, I pay a small tribute to Séamus Brennan with whom I studied at University College Galway. He was one of the proudest products of that university. He was also our Minister until a couple of months ago. I graduated in the same year as him, although I will not say which of us did better. We owe him a great deal. He was a great statesman, as one of the newspapers said today. Rath Dé ar a anam dílis.
