I move:
That Seanad Éireann notes the Report of the Council of Trustees of the National Library of Ireland for the year 1969-70.
While the rules of order allow me to move only one motion, we on this side proposed, out of consideration for the Minister or, as I now see, his Parliamentary Secretary, that these motions should be taken together. We are willing that that should be done purely to save time. The situations of the two institutions envisaged by these motions have only this much in common: that both of these institutions are in a disastrous condition. In all other respects there are differences between their situations and they require separate discussion and separate consideration. Of the two I would say that the National Library's position, although bad enough by international standards, is the less desperate. The National Library is not exposed to the same kind of risk which the museum is exposed to, namely, having the contents of its building decay and rot under its very eyes. At least if that danger exists, it does not exist to quite the same degree. That is the only reason the National Library's position is slightly desperate than that of the National Museum. It seems to me a hard and sad thing that, in the island of saints and scholars, in respect of the national collections of books and of antiquities represented in the National Library and the National Museum, we should be solemnly discussing here measures of an everyday kind which in other countries would require no comment and excite no interest, but are designed merely to keep these things from deteriorating. That unfortunately is the position we are faced with in both these institutions, but, as I say, more particularly in the National Museum than in the National Library.
Having said that by way of introduction I will deal with these institutions separately, but I want to make this much clear: I have no special inside knowledge of these institutions. In the nature of things I cannot have, nor can anybody on this side of the House. Whereas the Government, naturally and rightly, has at its disposal the advice and goodwill of the entire permanent Civil Service, Opposition Senators discussing a matter of national importance like this are naturally at the disadvantage that they may be in the position of having got some of its facts wrong and being open to contradiction because they cannot, in the nature of things, penetrate into the recesses of the Department of Education or into the recesses of the National Library and National Museum and extract the sort of information which is forthcoming frankly and immediately to a Minister or a Parliamentary Secretary.
The first thing I want to say about the National Library—and, indeed, the same goes for the National Museum— is that the conduct of affairs in regard to it has been characterised on the part of the Department of Education, so far as I can see, by an altogether inappropriate degree of reserve, fear and secrecy. I notice that in the Report of the Council of Trustees under discussion—indeed the same complaint is repeated in the report of the following year—Dr. K.W. Humphreys was commissioned to present a review on what he thought were the proper space requirements of the National Library.
The Humphreys Report on space requirements in the National Library has been with the Minister since April of this year. It has been with the Minister for nearly eight months, and it has only now begun to reach the Trustees. My information about this is at second or perhaps third hand, and I am willing that the Minister should contradict me, but my understanding is that, although the Trustees are the people one would have thought would be primarily concerned with the proper running of the National Library, this report on a matter vital to them has been withheld from them by the Department and by the Minister for the last eight months. That seems to me to be an eloquent comment on the way in which the Department of Education regard its duty in connection with the National Library and, indeed, with everything else under their control. I think it is scandalous that people in the position of Trustees, people who by definition have no vested interest, have no axe to grind, have no profit to make, have nothing to fear or nothing to gain by doing their duty, should be treated as though it was dangerous to disclose to them what the gentleman commissioned to report on space requirements has recommended until the Department have thoroughly digested it. That is no tribute to the Trustees, although no doubt the Minister or his Parliamentary Secretary will fall over himself in paying the usual facile compliments to the trustees on the good work they have done. If they are that good, they deserve to be shown a report about the space requirements of the institution which is nominally under their charge.
The space problem in the National Library is one obvious to anybody who walks in the door there. If I were conducting a party of my academic colleagues around Dublin—and it is a thing which I occasionally have to do— one place not to bring them would be the National Library, because if I brought them in the front door of the National Library they would suspect they were being brought in by the tradesman's extrance. It is stacked almost to the ceiling with maps, boxes, shelving which ought to be elsewhere, and the general impression created there is one of clutter, neglect and decay. I know that this sort of thing cannot be solved overnight and I know that the suggestion has been made—I do not know whether it is incorporated in the Humphreys Report or not—that the National Library's problems might be alleviated, or perhaps even entirely solved so far as space is concerned, if they were to take over the premises of the College of Art next door. That, of course, will become a possibility if and when the College of Art, as the Minister for Education envisaged when he was here a couple of weeks ago, is transferred to a new building in Morehampton Road.
Let me observe that even here we have not been free of administrative indecision and muddle, because when the Morehampton Road site was first acquired for the State it was envisaged that the National Library would be placed there. There has now been a change in official thinking—if "thinking" is not too dignified a word to use in regard to the intellectual operation which produced this muddle—and we are now going to have a College of Art in Morehampton Road, for which, as I have said before, no competition or advertisement has been held, and the likelihood is—although I cannot tell what is in the Humphreys Report— that the additional space required for the National Library will be made available in the premises or on the site now occupied by the College of Art, which, although the entrance to it is small, is actually a fairly big site. I understand that the total area which the accession of the College of Art premises would make to the existing National Library would be twice the volume of the existing National Library, and I understand—though again necessarily at second or third hand—that the space problem of the National Library would probably be solved, at any rate for the immediate future and perhaps even for the foreseeable future, if that space could be made available to it.
The problem is a very urgent one, and if it is to depend on the construction of the new College of Art in Morehampton Road, then the sooner we get ahead and do that the better, because the conditions of overcrowding in the National Library are indescribable. I have been in there on occasion and I can see it for myself. I can see, for example, in the offices that people of professional grade in order to get to a filing cabinet of drawers have to ask a typist to stand up and get out of the way. That is the degree of overcrowding which there is in there. Somebody who works in there and whose name, naturally, I am not going to reveal—I did not interrogate this man; we were talking about something quite different—spontaneously described his own working conditions as those of a "research slum".
I hope that what I have said might be sufficient to indicate the great urgency of the space problem in the National Library. Let me add a few details to it. The space problem in the National Library is so severe that large parts of the National Library's collection have had to be moved and sent elsewhere. In particular, large series of newspaper holdings have had to be taken out of the National Library and sent to makeshift quarters under the Four Courts, if you please, so that if somebody wants to consult one of these papers—and as anybody who goes to the National Library will know there are always people in there consulting newspapers— there seems to be a sort of permanent population in this country and city who hunt through old newspapers in search of knowledge, antiquarian or otherwise, and that is what the National Library is there for—in order to facilitate people of that kind in search of the kind of newspapers that have been removed to the Four Courts, a special van has to be sent to the Four Courts to collect it and bring it back. That, of course, is an altogether inordinately expensive and difficult operation for the purpose of facilitating a single reader, and the result, not unnaturally, is that the staff, in their own polite way, try to discourage people from making that sort of demand on them. Not only is it an absurdity that the National Library's collection should be fragmented in that way by the transference of newspapers which, as everybody knows, are frequently consulted, to the basement of the Four Courts, but I understand that the site in which they are lodged in the basement of the Four Courts is subject to periodic flooding. It may not happen very often that the Liffey floods to such a degree as to endanger this particular site, but I am told that it is not unknown for the cellars or basement in which these newspapers are housed to be flooded. I ask the House to consider what would they think of a situation in which irreplaceable holdings of our National Library are housed in a basement which can be inundated by the Liffey at a moment's notice?
The fragmentation of resources in the National Library are something which no library should have to experience and the result of it, of course, is—and again I am relying on a second or third-hand opinion, because I have no other way of producing information — that this falling-off of resources, that this effective diminution in services in the National Library, has been the direct cause of a falling-off in readership there. I notice from the report of the Council of Trustees that the average daily readership in the year 1966/67 was 170. The average daily readership in 1970/71, after a continuous decrease in the intervening two years, was 145. That is a falling-off of 15 per cent. When I saw these figures first, it occurred to me that perhaps the falling-off was due to the provision of new library facilities in Trinity College and the removal of a large part of University College to Belfield. Of course it is true that the National Library, particularly in the long vacation, was heavily used by university students. I am still inclined to think that this falling-off may be in part due to the extra library facilities elsewhere. I am assured, admittedly at second hand, by people who are closer to the National Library's operations than I am, that this falling off is not accountable for by the extra library facilities elsewhere, but that it is directly attributable to the cutting-back in the library services. As one of the people to whom I spoke about this said: "What else can you expect? Can you expect people to come to a library in which the services are becoming progressively worse?"
Bad services are one thing; they are something from which the public suffer, but a library, like any academic institution, depends on highly qualified staff, staff who are able not only to do mechanical jobs such as filing, but have got some facility in research and investigation into the nature of material and so forth. The National Library has some staff of this kind, but again, I understand some of those staff members are threatening to leave their jobs through frustration. This is a carbon copy of the situation I described here 18 months ago, when we last discussed the National Museum. I stated then that there were people in the National Museum who had left or were about to leave their jobs there because they simply could not stick it any longer.
Admittedly people who do academic types of jobs are privileged people in the eyes of the community. I have admitted here before that I consider they are privileged people, and I have never tried to pretend that people with an academic kind of job are other than people who have got it lucky from society at large. I know that such people are favoured by society and to that extent owe society a corresponding duty. However, to do a research job properly you need conditions of peace. You cannot carry out research properly if you have to get up frequently in order to allow somebody else to reach a filing cabinet. Such a job cannot be done properly in conditions of clutter, muddle and noise. It cannot be done if typewriters are banging away in your immediate vicinity. You need peaceful conditions if you are to do such a job effectively, and those conditions just do not exist in the National Library at present. I understand that is the main reason why there is constant apprehension that trained, valuable and, perhaps, irreplaceable staff will move elsewhere, to places such as universities in which conditions in some respects have been improving, or leave the country altogether.
It is largely because of space difficulties that such a situation has arisen, but it is also because of the lack of the facilities which are normal in libraries, facilities of a technical kind which I am not qualified to understand or explain and which are vital to the proper functioning of a library. I understand that the facilities in our National Library are in many respects defective. There is not as much as a satisfactory method of binding manuscript letters there. If the National Library wish to have manuscript letters bound as they should be bound, with a special process of inter-leafing, they have to send them either to the Public Records Office or perhaps to Belfast. It is not long since a collection of letters of a highly important national kind had to go to Belfast for binding because there were no facilities in the National Library for doing such binding.
I realise that the greater part of this problem in the National Library is connected with money. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us that we cannot do everything we would like to do, that we cannot have everything we would like to have and that we have to cut our cloth according to our measure, but I am complaining about the fact that, in the scale of priorities which this Government erects, the people that have the hind tit are the cultural institutions. That is completely wrong in a country such as this which has such grandiose pretensions to aspirations of a non-material kind, to a cultural background and heritage second to none, which contains Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries who, every day of the week, are telling schoolchildren about how they should take a pride in their past and a pride in their surroundings. I believe those sentiments are honestly expressed, but the Government should put its money where its mouth is and not leave the National Library in a position where it is a reproach to us. As I said at the beginning, the National Library is a place to which I would be ashamed to take a foreign colleague because of the conclusion he would draw about this nation if he were to have a look at the National Library's condition.
The curious thing—and a contradictory thing in a way until one understands the kernel of the problem—about the National Library is that because of the shortage of money, which is the root of their problems, they are not able to acquire enough material. Its acquisitions are almost nil. For example, the Library gets an annual grant, but that grant runs parallel with the ordinary financial year, and my information is that the National Library at present has not one penny to its account and will not have another penny to its account until 1st April next. If Trinity College were to decide to sell the Book of Kells tomorrow, the National Library could not even bid for it because they have not got the money to buy anything. My information is that their annual grant has already been spent, and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary—I am sure he is too much of a politician to say something which would involve him in getting a black eye with public officials —will not tell us that such a position has arisen because of prodigal spending in the first part of the year. The spending carried out by the National Library is of the most frugal type. The people who work in the National Library freely admit that the reason why they are able to acquire material of Irish interest at all is because of the generosity and patriotism of private people.
The National Library are able to make acquisitions of capital national importance, not at the price which the owners of that material could have commanded on the open market, but at a ruinous price for the owners, whose sense of patriotism and public duty has induced them to offer material to the National Library at a fraction of the price such material would have commanded on the international market. It is shameful that the National Library should be dependent on the patriotism and self-sacrifice of private citizens, who perhaps may need the money, to make such acquisitions. It is shameful that they are not in a position to offer the price which those people could get if they were to go abroad to sell. But the truth is—and this is where the paradox comes in—that even if the National Library were to be given a larger current grant for acquisitions, they would not make many more acquisitions because they have no room to house them. In other words, as it was graphically put to me by someone who is more closely connected with it than I am, a larger grant for acquisition purposes would be an embarrassment to them, because, except for a volume of unique interest and of very small dimensions which would cause no particular housing problems, it has no place to contain important collections. It just has not got the room for them. I understand, again through a graphic description given to me, that as soon as they rehouse some part of their collection by shunting it down to the basement of the Four Courts, the space left vacant by that removal is filled up in the twinkling of an eye by something else.
The open-shelf space for reference works in the reading room of the National Library—which all of us I am sure have had occasion to use in the past—has been grievously curtailed because of an accession of a very large series of parliamentary papers from the Irish University Press which take up a colossal yardage of shelf room. The result is that papers that previously were there in their entirety, such as the Dáil reports to which I referred frequently before I got access to the Dáil reports elsewhere, have been curtailed in the last four to six years. The Dáil reports from 1922 onwards used be in the open shelves but the first 35 years of the Dáil reports have now been taken out of the open shelves and sent elsewhere in order to make room for other books. Although the National Library can reasonably complain that they do not get enough money for acquisitions, if something were to come on to the market tomorrow—I mean on the market and not simply the subject of a free gift—the National Library would not be able to house it even if they were in a financial position to acquire it.
I see this position of acquisitions as being comparable to a sick man being deliberately kept in a condition of disease so that he will be economical on food; he is deliberately being kept in a weak condition so that he will not eat much. I am afraid that that simile may be an injustice to people in the National Library and the Department who do their best for the Library but it is a shame on the Government in particular.
On the last occasion when the concerns of the Department of Education in this area were being discussed, I remember a Senator on the far side of the House—after we on this side had shown how disgraceful the conditions in the National Museum were—saying that the blame for that must be spread broadly on the shoulders of the people. The blame for anything must be borne by the Government in office during the relevant period. When we are in Government we will get the kicks and accept them with good heart and not complain about how we are being blamed for something which should be taken by the people.
This Government has a poor cultural record. I want to say in extenuation of that remark that I make a generous allowance for the fine restoration of the National Gallery. No one could say that it is anything but a fine job. I do not want to lessen the force of that tribute when I say that there is a point of view being expressed—I do not necessarily subscribe to it myself—that it is remarkable that of the three cultural institutions, geographically so close together, the National Gallery, the National Museum and the National Library, the one singled out for spectacular and absolutely magnificent improvement should be the National Gallery in which the proportion of specifically Irish interest is minuscule, compared with the proportion of material of Irish interest in the other institutions. I have heard the suspicion voiced—I do not adopt it as my own as it may be unworthy—that it is a case of sodar in ndiaidh na n-uasal, that it is a case of putting up a shop front so as to provide us with a National Gallery, such as exists in other cities and other countries, in which foreigners can see paintings by the Flemish, Spanish, Florentine, eighteenth century English Schools, and so on and that, while they are there, they might throw an eye into the Irish Portrait Gallery. In that way they can see that the "Paddies" know about Titian and about Goya.
I have heard that suspicion voiced. The real "Paddy" material—and I use the word with affection and not in derision—which is in the National Library and in the National Museum is not allowed to be seen. It is relegated to boxes in damp basements; it is in a situation of decay, rot and neglect. I have heard that suspicion voiced and, while I do not adopt it as my own because it may be unworthy and may be perhaps too vicious to be true, it requires a reply. We require to be told why it was that the National Gallery should have got this absolutely magnificent—I say so unreservedly—restoration, while the other two neighbouring institutions, which are of greater pertinent significance to the Irish people, whatever about Europe or the world at large, are left in this condition of neglect.
I shall now refer to the National Museum. The last debate which we had on the National Museum took place on 11th June, 1970, which is all but a week short of 18 months ago On that occasion we, on this side of the House, were in the fortunate position of being able to make use of material which had been compiled by the professional branch of the Civil Service Association, in which they examined and criticised conditions in the National Museum. That was a unique opportunity for us on this side of the House We were presented with something which was as good a brief as a Minister could have received. And signs on it; because the Minister was not able to contradict a single word of this report, it being at least as good as the information available to himself.
Deputy Faulkner, who was only then newly appointed as Minister, had at that time made a good impression with the staff of the National Museum, by at least visiting the museum and by seeing and speaking to them. They were grateful for that show of interest on his part. However, I am sorry to say that there has been no material of this quasiofficial kind made available since then. There has not been another report by the professional branch of the Civil Service Association, and I have had to fall back on hearsay, on my own private inquiries, which are not perhaps very efficient, for information of what has been going on there since. Conditions during the last 18 months have not materially changed, in spite of the very definite assurances and promises given by the Minister at that time.
I should like to go through the various points which were prominent in the debate of 11th June, 1970. The first one was the question of staffing. I understand that since 11th June, 1970, four vacancies have been filled in professional grades. These were established posts which were vacant at that time. They do not represent an increase in the museum establishment. The National Museum establishment, even with these four vacancies filled, falls far short still of the minimum establishment recommended for the National Museum by a commission which sat in 1927. Norwithstanding the enormous increase of material which the National Museum has acquired— most of it lying around in packing-cases because they have nowhere else to put it—it takes no account of the enormously expanded dimensions of ordinary education fo both adult and juvenile; it takes no account of the expanded importance which the sort of material housed in museums can have in the field of industrial design. It took no account, in 1927, of the huge inflation of importance which a museum would have in the following generations. Norwithstanding that, the establishment of the National Museum at professional level is below what was recommended in 1927, 44 years ago. Last year the Minister promised that new appointments of technical grade were in the pipeline. My understanding is that no such appointments have yet been made, and that they are still only at the advertisement stage. I understand that six technical assistants will soon be appointed, and even that modest number will be regarded by the National Museum people as an absolute Godsend.
I am complaining about the fantastic, unbelievable delay in getting anything done, when it comes to dealing with the National Muesum or, indeed, with the Department behind it. Why should we have had to wait 18 months, since the Minister's positive assurance here in June, 1970, that these posts were being created and filled? Why should we have had to wait 18 months and find that the people who are candidates for these posts are out now making themselves known and coming for interview? What is the explanation of it?
I want to put that in some perspective. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will not accuse me of doing what the Minister accused me of doing last time he was here, namely, of denigrating the Civil Service; I am not denigrating anybody. However, I want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the Civil Service personnel has increased roughly by 25 per cent since 1960. In the last 11 years, for every four civil servants there were in 1960, there are now five. The gross cost of the Civil Service has virtually doubled; in fact, I think it has more than doubled during the last 11 years.
This is natural and right because of the salary increases which the fantastic rise in the cost of living has justified. What I am complaining about is the kind of priority which this figure discloses. The State are well able to employ between 8,000 and 10,000 extra civil servants, but they are not able to recruit another six technical assistants for the National Museum. Where is the sense of that? Where is the reason in it, in this island of saints and scholars? My blood boils when I look at a figure like that, and when I read the newspapers about Ministers, ex-Ministers, or aspiring Ministers lecturing the people about the "quality of Irish life," when they cannot appoint six technical assistants to do absolutely rock-bottom work in the National Museum.
The quality of Irish life is crated and cobwebbed in damp basements: That is the quality of Irish life and that is where it lies. It does not lie in the affluence reflected in sprouting neo-Georgian suburbs on the outskirts of Dublin. That is what I want to tell the Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister who stands behind him, and all their colleagues, ex-colleagues or future colleagues, whether in Government or Opposition. They are neglecting the real quality of Irish life. Everything that is really important to the Irish people, or which should be important to them, is pushed to one side and rendered unimportant: there are not enough votes in it. Everything which is secondary, which is cheap and marginal and uncharacteristic of Ireland which can be found duplicated in Leeds and Scunthorpe in Oberhausen and in Milan is "the quality of Irish life." That is the kind of message we have been getting from Fianna Fáil and that is what I must complain about bitterly. In the context of this debate it is more than relevant.
A second problem faced by the National Museum which I mentioned last year is the problem of space. Of course, there has been no improvement in that respect either. On that occasion I told the House that the information provided by the professional arm of the Civil Service Association was to the effect that the collections of the National Museum were scattered, not only in every part of Dublin but all over the country. Senators may have forgotten some of the more laugh-provoking items here, namely that the National Museum's collection of coaches is housed in the military barracks in Kilkenny. On my last information it was decaying rapidly. I particularly asked the Minister last year if he would see that this decay proceeded no further and his reply was "The Senator can rest assured that that aspect is also being looked at." I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to tell the House, 18 months later, what has been done to arrest the deterioration of the National Museum's collection of vehicles and carriages. I want him to tell us specifically what has been done since the 11th June last year to arrest the decay, of which I then had evidence, but of which I have no further evidence.
On the last occasion I told the House that the herbarium in the National Museum, which has now been rehoused in the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, was housed in a place, the roof of which was leaking in 50 places, and which had to be covered by polythene sheeting at night. That was the way this island of saints and scholars treated their collection built up over 150 years, and representing the life work of several scholars. The Minister has stated that the roof has sinced been repaired. But I should like to tell the Parliamentary Secretary about another leaking roof in the museum. This is the main hall of the museum, where there was a nice tintawn carpeting laid for the Rosc exhibition. The Parliamentary Secretary can see this for himself; and if he goes there during a shower, he will be rained on.
I understand there is a plan to give the museum new premises in the "Quality of Irish Life" office block to be erected at the corner of Molesworth Street and the space requirements of the museum will be alleviated by this. I am not a museum expert, and I will not pronounce a positive judgement on whether the Setanta building will be the appropriate place to house the overflow from the Kildare Street building. I do not think it will be satisfactory. It will be a fragmentation, it will pose academic and administrative problems for the museum staff and it will not surprise me if professional and academic advice will be heavily opposed to that solution. I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to tell us whether it is proposed definitely to go ahead with this solution, without having first got some expert advice, apart from such advice as is available inside the walls of his own Department. This solution may be called temporary but when once adopted will be with us for 50 years and I should like to know if that solution will have the approval of an expert outside consultant, not somebody under the Minister's thumb.
It brings me, having mentioned the question of a consultant, to the central point of what this side of the House was trying to do when we last debated this question. This, I have at first hand because I was part of a deputation which originally raised the matter I told the House that when Deputy Lenihan was Minister for Education he received a deputation in July or August, 1968 representative of the two bodies who have a statutory duty in regard to the museum and from whose connections the museum originally developed, also the RDS and the Royal Irish Academy. These bodies recommended that a committee of outside consultants, people with no axe to grind and no prejudices in regard to Ireland should be employed to advise on the whole future of the museum. I am not talking about things like space, but the whole philosophy behind the museum. I will deal with that point briefly in a moment. As I have stated I was on that deputation and can speak from first-hand knowledge. Deputy Lenihan received us courteously, he refrained from saying there were "no problems", which was an agreeable change, but he did not dissent from the proposition that outside advice might profitably be sought.
When Deputy Faulkner succeeded Deputy Lenihan as Minister for Education he specifically told this House and gave an undertaking that a consultant would be appointed within a year. This is reported at column 557, Volume 68, Seanad Official Report. Admittedly Deputy Faulkner said that the consultancy question would have to wait until more progress had been made in Kilmainham but he did say that a consultant would be appointed within a year. That was in June, 1970. According to my information, no consultant has yet been appointed. Leaving aside that fact, which speaks for itself, we questioned then, as we question now, the necessity of waiting until work had been done in Kilmainham or elsewhere before getting popular outside advice on what the future of the museum situation should be.
This is a serious question of policy and even of philosophy. Do we attribute any importance to the museum's potential in adding a dimension to primary or secondary education? What do we think its role in research should be? Do we think it should be centralised or de-centralised? Should it be maintained under one roof or should it be split up under several roofs? Should collections be divided under large general headings? These are important questions which neither I nor anyone else on this side of the House is capable of answering with authority, but someone should be able to answer them. No consultant has yet been engaged, despite Deputy Faulkner's promise to get expert opinion on these matters. I do not see why we should have to wait until something is done in Kilmainham, in Earlsfort Terrace, in Kickham Barracks, Clonmel, or the barracks in Kilkenny before a consultant should be called in. It is now, when things are in chaos, we need a consultant; not when chaos becomes worse in a few years time, as may easily be the case if past experience regarding the museum is anything to go by. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary again to tell us explicitly why that consultant has not been appointed, if I am correct in stating that he has not been appointed, and when it is intended to appoint him, and who he will be or how the Department proposes to go about appointing him.
I said just now, in fairness to Deputy Faulkner that he had linked the appointment of a consultant with the question of the former Royal Hospital at Kilmainham. He said it was envisaged that this would be the centre of a folk museum in which ancient and modern Irish skills and products, and so on would be represented and to which a fair amount of the national collection in the museum would be removed and properly displayed. No one on this side of the House questions that the size of the building in Kilmainham would be appropriate and that building itself would be a proper setting for this.
What is happening in Kilmainham? My information is that work there has come to a standstill and nothing has been done for months or years. I have even heard a rumour that one wing has practically fallen and has been declared dangerous. If I were in the Government's position I would raise this question of the policy behind the idea that the national collections should have to wait for proper disposal until Kilmainham has been repaired. This is a colossal job and I do not need the Parliamentary Secretary to tell us that it will be a serious drain on the national purse. If that is so, it must raise a serious question as to the advisability of linking Kilmainham with the proper housing of the national collections in the museum. If a serious architectual or preservation problem has arisen in regard to Kilmainham, we should forget about it as a site for the rehousing of the museum's exhibits or non-exhibits, as they are at present, because no one can see them. If Kilmainham is a serious problem we will have to think of somewhere else for these collections. I want the Parliamentary Secretary to be specific in his reply about, firstly, what is happening at Kilmainham, what is envisaged regarding it, and whether he would concede that if the restoration of Kilmainham has to be put on the long finger for financial reasons, some other urgent solution must be found for the national collections.
As I have already stated, I am not an expert in such matters, but something which occurs to me as a possibility— and I may as well throw it out, fly the kite and see if anybody will comment on it favourably or otherwise—is that one site which could be used in the fairly near future for rehousing and proper display of, at any rate, a section of the National Museum's collections, perhaps the Irish antiquities, would be the Earlsfort Terrace site of University College, Dublin.
I do not know what the intentions of the college or the Government are in regard to that building. I heard it said that the Earlsfort Terrace building will be taken over by the Civil Service in due course, but I want to warn, if I may do so within the rules of this House, the Civil Service, through the Parliamentary Secretary, that they will not be comfortable there. Earlsfort Terrace is a very seedy decrepit building. It requires quite disproportionate maintenance of a mop and broom kind to even keep it clean. It is totally unsuitable for use as Civil Service offices. I feel that if the Civil Service take it over it will not be very long before the place is pulled down, until the same thing happens to it as has happened to other quarters to which public officials have been sent and which were never suitable for them.
I hope I am not saying this in a dogmatic tone but it might be that University College, Dublin's premises at Earlsfort Terrace, if UCD no longer needs them and that may be the case in the foreseeable future, could be used to house and house well, if the building were reconstructed, perhaps the Irish antiquities or fine arts section of the National Museum's collections. That is a suggestion which I have no authority from anybody to make and I hope I do not get into trouble in UCD for having thrown it out. It seems to me that Earlsfort Terrace is likely to be abandoned within the foreseeable future when Belfield is completely constructed and Earlsfort Terrace, although very seedy and insanitary to some extent inside, is at least not ruins. The L-shaped building which fronts on Earlsfort Terrace, the north wing facing towards St. Stephen's Green, is not ruinous. It is a solid building and could, I believe, be used for a purpose like this without excessive expenditure.
There are a couple of matters I want to mention. I realise I have taken up a fair amount of time. One of them is an important matter which I will leave to the end. There is a marginal matter which I feel I should mention before I come to this and that is the question of the public's knowledge of the National Museum and its function. My impression is—it is backed up by what I hear people connected with the National Museum saying—that the public do not know much about the National Museum or its function and are not informed about the National Museum's particular function in regard to finds of Irish antiquities. My information is that people who find objects of Bronze Age period, medieval period or objects whose antiquity or uniqueness are of historical importance or makes them significant in any way, tend not to know that the National Museum is the right place to apply to for information about them. All sorts of bodies who have no direct connection and no statutory responsibility in the matter are approached by people who find these things. The National Museum literally does not know what is being found in the country at the moment. These unlisted finds frequently either find their way abroad or into informal local collections.
I am not against the idea of local museums. When we last debated this subject strong pleas were made by Senators Quinlan and Horgan for local museums. I am not against the idea. All I say, in regard to the whole museum situation, is that we should be properly advised about it. It should not run on an ad hoc basis of the kind on which it is running at the moment. We should get proper expert advice about the role of a country like this in regard to the preservation of its own antiquities, whether these should be centralised or whether it is educationally or nationally better to decentralise them. There is no policy about these matters at the moment.
There is no policy and no form of public information in regard to items of antique interest, and I use antique in the broadest possible sense, which turn up all the time here and there throughout the country. My information is that travelling buyers, people who in the past were called tinkers, set up as antique buyers, go round the country to people who know very little about what they have got and buy up material which in many cases deserves a place in a museum setting. The public are so uninformed about the national importance of something which may be lying unregarded in a corner of a house or dug up in a garden that the National Museum is literally ignorant of what is being found, what is going out of the country and what is being placed in local museums.
The Parliamentary Secretary ought to let us know if he proposes to do anything, even something as humble as putting up posters in post offices and garda barracks. That is humble enough, God knows, but it is done in regard to saving certificates, recruitment for the Garda etc. and I cannot see why it should not be done in regard to people who find or think they own objects of antique interest. I should like to know if the Parliamentary Secretary would be in favour of a campaign to inform the public of the potential national interest of ancient items, which they may have themselves or which they accidentally find.
There is one other small matter I want to mention, before I wind up, which is very relevant to the National Library as well as to the National Museum, and that is the whole question of items of national interest of a documentary or pictorial kind disappearing out of the country under our noses. The only legislation we have in this regard is the Documents and Pictures Regulation of Export Act, 1945. Under this Act, which is provided with no penalties for an infraction of the duty which it lays on people—it is a lex imperfecta, you can disobey this Act and so far as it is concerned no penalty at all can be applied to you—the Minister for Education is entitled to declare that a document or a painting, or documents or paintings of a particular class—I am condensing the provisions—are of national, historical or literary interest and should not be exported from the country. But no effective machinery is provided for making sure this does not happen. This Act might as well never have been passed.
I know the Parliamentary Secretary has not had notice of this and if he prefers I will get a colleague in the Dáil to put down a question about it, but I should like to know, as a matter of interest, how many times a Minister has made any order under this Act in the last 26 years. I would say very seldom indeed, and naturally so because anybody with an item of a literary or pictorial kind which is worth money, who knows that such an Act exists and who is not patriotically minded in the way that I have described many of the donors who give items to the National Library, will keep quiet about it, will take it out of the country and sell it elsewhere and not a thing can be done about it.
That is not all. So little regarded is this Act that I am told when a picture comes to the notice of any public authority, and the suspicion arises that this ought to be kept in the country, the people to whom the picture is sent for an opinion are not the National Gallery, but the National Library. So, in addition to the conditions in which it has to work the National Library is saddled with this absurd duty, which no one there is capable of performing, unless by accident he may know something about painting, of judging whether or not a picture is suitable for an order retaining it in the country or whether it can be exported abroad. If my information is correct how can that be defended? It is a small thing but, if it is true, it is absolutely symptomatic of the kind of disgraceful neglect and indifference with which this whole area of national life is being treated by the apostles of the "quality of Irish life."
My last point is very important. The Board of Visitors of the National Museum, I am told, have in this calendar year repeatedly sought an interview with the Minister for Education and my information is that they have been stonewalled and refused consistently a meeting with Deputy Faulkner. Of course, like everything else, there are probably two sides to the story and naturally I will listen with interest to what the Parliamentary Secretary has to say, and if he contradicts me I will withdraw my following remarks. If the people who were seeking an interview with Deputy Faulkner had been a delegation from Hackball's Cross looking for a telephone kiosk they would have been quick enough to get it, but when they are people who have serious statutory duties in regard to the National Museum, they have no access to the Minister in whose hands lies the solution of their problems.
Now these visitors have repeatedly recommended during several years past that the whole conduct of the affairs of the National Museum should be taken away from the Department of Education and be entrusted to an independent authority, an independent board.
We on this side of the House last year pressed that that point of view should be accepted by the Government. It has not been accepted. I hope it will be accepted. It seems to me that no other solution will be possible, at any rate, for the National Museum. The National Library is perhaps not in quite such a desperate condition. No other solution seems to me to be possible than to take away and give to an independent board these important national functions which the Government are unwilling to discharge, and which the Department of Education are incompenent of discharging.
