I have initiated this Adjournment debate on the National Library as this national cultural institution continues to be neglected by the Government. In 1992 its strategic plan was launched by Deputy Reynolds, Taoiseach at the time, and given support by the Fianna Fáil-led Administration. Now, under this Government the National Library does not feature very highly on the agenda.
No doubt we will hear from the Minister that there has been a handsome percentage increase in the funding for the National Library from his Government. However, such an argument is disingenuous considering the low base on which this percentage is measured.
The service position remains exactly the same as that of 1992. The library has to close two mornings per week to enable opening those nights. The manuscript room is also closed at lunch hour and tea time. Its present allocation of funds means that the National Library is in the news more often on the basis of collections it has failed to acquire rather than on its notable acquisitions. The lack of financial resources means that the acquisition, preservation, conservation and exploitation of its collections are severely hampered.
In December 1993 an on-line public access catalogue was launched. However, a researcher using the library now has to search through three separate catalogues. Retrospective conversion of these catalogues is an urgent requirement and a project which needs funds on a once-off basis.
Similar injections of moneys, again on a once-off basis, are needed to convert the library's rich holding of maps, prints, drawings and manuscripts to machinereadable format. The library needs funds to explore the prospect of the Internet as well.
At present large collections of valuable manuscripts remain unavailable because of lack of staff to catalogue it. When the Minister refers to the percentage increase which this library received, I call on him to assess his position in the light of the following figures. I would like to compare three national libraries — the National Library of Wales, the National Library of Scotland and the National Library of Ireland. The National Library of Wales has five million collections, the National Library of Scotland has 6.5 million and the National Library of Ireland has five million. Staffing for the National Library of Wales numbers 225, for the National Library of Scotland it is 252, and for the National Library of Ireland it is 65. The budget for the National Library of Wales is just under £6 million, the budget for the National Library of Scotland is £9.23 million plus £2.1 million for capital projects, and the budget for the National Library of Ireland is £2.1 million. The population these libraries serve is 2.8 million for the National Library of Wales, five million for the National Library of Scotland and 5.5 million for the National Library of Ireland. Surely on foot of these figures the Minister can no longer claim that his stewardship has greatly improved the lot of the National Library in financial or staffing terms. The Minister made some play out of the photographic archive in Temple Bar which is almost finished but where are the extra staff required to run the project? Temporary cataloguers employed to deal with a considerable backlog of material have had to be let go due to the public service embargo. Although capital development projects have been planned and are well advanced, where is the money to come from for them?
The National Library deserves the financial support of this Government as it provides a very valuable service to the people and to many overseas readers— approximately 30 per cent of the library's annual total number of readers are from overseas. I hope the Minister will recognise the need for once-off funding for the projects mentioned and will commit himself and his Government to addressing and resolving the serious problem of funding and staffing in the National Library without further delay. These persistent problems can lead only to frustration and the lowering of morale among an expert and dedicated staff.