I move to reduce this Vote by £500. I do so to call attention to the circumstances under which a Director was appointed to the National Gallery last autumn, and also to the general condition of affairs under which the National Gallery is administered. It is not my intention to canvass the qualifications of the gentleman who is now Director of the National Gallery. I think this is a very bad assembly in which to discuss questions of art. There are possibly two or three Deputies who have an intimate knowledge of that subject, but the majority of us have very little knowledge of it. The circumstances under which the Director was appointed do not require any canvassing of his qualifications at all. There is a Board of Governors of the National Gallery. The present Director was a member of the Board of Governors until the day before the last day on which the appointment of Director could be held. He resigned from the Board of Governors on that day and was the following day appointed Director. That is absolutely and entirely wrong. If a member of a Board of Guardians resigned office one day and was appointed by his former colleagues next day as Master of the workhouse or clerk of the board, the Minister for Local Government would refuse to sanction the appointment. Yet, the Governors of the National Gallery of Ireland, many of whom are personal friends of my own, take that course, which appears to me most mistaken and an extraordinarily bad precedent. If a person who is a member of a public body is to be at liberty to resign on Wednesday and on Thursday to be appointed to a salaried post in the gift of that body, there is an opening for improper dealings which ought not to exist.
The fact that this thing did occur cannot be controverted. The fact that it did occur caused me to look into the Statutes under which the National Gallery exists and by which it is regulated. I find that the qualifications for Governors are many and various. I have not been able to find out completely how they stand, because one volume of the Statutes has been removed from the library upstairs. I gather that the National Gallery is regulated mainly by an Act passed 70 years ago, in 1854, and that a number of people are ex-officio on the Board of Governors because of their official qualifications. Among them is the President of the Royal Dublin Society. It might conceivably happen that the President of the R.D.S. knew more about bullocks than he did about Botticelli. The senior Vice-President, who may also be in the same position, is an ex-officio Governor. So is the Chairman of the Board of Works, who may know a great deal about architecture without knowing much about the art of painting. In addition, there is a remarkable provision, which has passed into abeyance, by which anybody who subscribes £10 to the funds of the Gallery has a vote for Governor. There were a certain number apparently of elected Governors. I think that has passed into abeyance. The remaining Governors are now appointed by the President. Once appointed, they are under no control of any kind from the Executive. We have to vote a sum, which, I think, is a very small sum, of £4,000 odd annually. Though very small, that is a charge on the nation's finances, and, as a matter of principle, I hold there should be some Minister responsible and able to control all expenditure. other than that which is placed upon the Central Fund.
I know the President had no time to go into the matter this Session. I do not expect him to do miracles. Though the regulation of the National Gallery is and ought to be an important element in the nation's life, still it is not as important as the matters that have been forcing themselves on the President's attention. I do hope, however, that when he has time he will, either by setting up a small Commission of Inquiry or by some other means, go into the whole question of the National Gallery and how it is to be organised and run in future with a view to making it responsible to the Executive and with a view to seeing that incidents of the kind which happened in the appointment of the present Director will not happen again.
