Since the foundation of the State we have failed to display the Irish Geological Collection, one of the finest national geological collections anywhere in the world. It was originally housed in two separate collections. One of them was actually in the curved corridor in Leinster House which until 1878 was owned by the Royal Dublin Society, taken over by the State from 1878 to 1922. This was administered either from Kensington or after 1900, when the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction was set up after the efforts of Sir Horace Plunkett by that Department. Since 1922 it has been under the aegis of the Department of Education.
There were two collections which comprised the State Geological Collection. One belonged to the Geological Survey which was stored in the curved colonnade connecting Leinster House with the National History Museum and the curved colonnade was taken over for ministerial offices and the collection was crated. This collection was owned by the Geological Survey: some of it went back to the Geological Survey and 90 per cent of the original collection has been lost and nobody knows where it is.
The second collection was the property of the Royal Dublin Society and it was housed in what was known as the Fossil Hall which is behind the College of Science. This collection remained in the Fossil Hall but after 1922 because of the security difficulties which the Government and the State faced it was closed to the public and there was never free access to it since 1922. Bits were ultimately chipped off the Fossil Hall for Ministerial offices, the Oireachtas Library, the Oireachtas catering department and the Army and eventually the Fossil Hall was entirely demolished in the sixties for ministerial offices. At that stage that section of the geological collection was crated and there was no outcry from the public because, of course, since 1922 the public had not an opportunity to see the collection. When that collection was crated, to give some idea of the size and extent of it, there were 400 wooden crates. To crate it the people had to work against time, with the destruction of the Fossil Hall impending. They had a limited time to do the work in. The remainder was stored and still is stored in drawers. One of the pieces, for example, is a fossil of 20 feet in length which is broken up into seven distinct pieces and crated in the geological collection which is now in the Daingean Reformatory in crates and drawers. The seven pieces which were separated because they were so big, should be reerected and assembled and displayed.
The collection had been moved to Kilmainham and it has since, because of the recent work in Kilmainham, been moved to Daingean. There is a problem about the collection as it is, quite apart from the fact that it is a geological collection a proportion of which should be on display and available for public inspection. One of the problems is that much of the material will deteriorate in crates because it cannot be looked after as it would be in a museum. Some of this material is not entirely stable; for example, one of the types of rock there is marcasite — it is an iron ore — and it oxidises over time under atmospheric conditions to ferrous sulphate. There is a consequent volumetric change and the rocks split and since this is a very common base for fossils what happens is that the fossils just break apart and are of no further value or interest. To preserve this particular fossil and to preserve the rock in which it is embedded there is a fairly simple museum technique. You expose it to ammonia vapour about twice yearly. You can do this quite easily if it is in drawers and it is available and it is stored in a museum, but if it is in crates and the crates have to be broken open, this does not happen. All you do is put a dish containing a proper chemical compound that releases ammonia vapour and that keeps the fossil in condition and prevents the volumetric change which splits the rock and breaks up the fossil.
These collections go back to the second half of the 18th century. The most famous sub-collection of the RDS collection is the Leskean Collection which is particularly interesting both historically and scientifically. It was catalogued by a pupil of the famous geologist Werner, who was called Lesky and because it was catalogued according to the Wernerian theory, which is now outdated, it is of great scientific and historical interest. This was catalogued very carefully and there were originally 7,200 specimens in the Leskean Collection. It was purchased in 1792 for £1,200 by the Dublin Society, the forerunner of the Royal Dublin Society, and of those 7,200 specimens only 1,800 can be located in the present collection. The others have disappeared mysteriously. Nobody knows where they are. What we do know is that the National History Museum, around the turn of the century, tended to lend specimens to schools and not recall them. One of the things that is known is that a substantial lending was made to a technical school in Ballymoney, County Antrim and it has not been recovered. Parts of this collection were lent to schools all around the country and no proper effort was made to ensure their return. So, the collection has diminished by a factor of about five.
Now this joint collection still — what remains of it — is a superb mineral collection. There are examples of native diamonds, gold and silver and nearly all the meteorites which fell on Ireland in recent times, including a famous Brasky meteorite which fell in Patrickswell in 1812, weighing 60 lbs. These might just have had academic value until recently but with the space programme the existence of meteorites has taken on a new and immediate importance.
The fossil side of the collection is, according to the geologists, of unbelievable magnitude. There are aquatic reptiles, pre-historic birds, pterodactyls, the famous 20 foot specimen is known as the thaumatosaurus cramptoni, named after Crampton who had something to do with discovering it. It came from Whitby in Yorkshire and was originally exhibited in the zoo. But there are plants and ferns from a famous find in Kiltorcan in County Kilkenny, and they are one of the earliest complete collections of fossil plants and fossil ferns. Also, there are fossils from our coalfields, from Castlecomer, from Ballingarry and from the Arigna fields, and indeed there is a superb iron collection from Creevykeel in County Leitrim. Some of these were originally exhibited in Sir Robert Kane's Irish Industrial Museum which was located at 51 St. Stephen's Green which I think now is part of the property of the Commissioners of Public Works, and, in fact, some of the exhibits are still in the wall of the ground floor in 51 St. Stephen's Green, some of the marbles which were part of that exhibition.
The collection which is essentially in crates and drawers has been moved from Kilmainham to the former industrial school in Daingean, which is 50 miles out of Dublin. It is not clear whether there is any proper provision made for the preservation of the collection there because, as I said, some of these rocks are not chemically stable and they deteriorate rapidly over time. What is needed is a permanent home which gives facilities for display and storage and this would need considerable effort on behalf of the State. Considering that we have had this collection since 1922 and no arrangements have ever been made for displaying it, it is surely time we took this responsibility seriously and thought of proper storage and exhibition facilities for our collection. The normal arrangement for collections such as this is that a certain amount should be on exhibition; roughly three times that amount would be stored; you could not exhibit the whole collection at once but you could rotate, and then there would be a certain proportion of space left for expansion and further collection. One of the new buildings in Merrion Row has been offered for this collection. The Folk Life Department are getting two floors and the geology collection are being offered one floor. But the space is not enough; there is not enough office space and the storage space would only take half of the present material. At least it is a start but more is needed, and it is not a final solution. In fact it is considerably inferior to the situation which existed in this House prior to 1922 when in the carved colonnade a considerable amount of the collection was on display.
The whole area of geology and of geological collection has taken on a new and immediate interest because of the mining industry, because of off-shore oil and gas searches and because of our energy problems which involve us in reassessing our resources of coal, oil, shales and fossil fuel. All these energy sources essentially come under the term fossil fuel and one of the important things in the educational process which goes into developing any concern for knowledge of our geological strata involves being able to show people rocks and proper geological and fossil displays. One of the great advantages in having our unique geological collection—what is left of it—on display would be the educational benefit of being able to show it off. It would make a marvellous touring point for schools and other educational institutions. So, this is an urgent reason for making available proper display space for our collections.
In teaching geology, prospecting or mineralogy the basic building block is a proper collection of rocks and fossils. The Minister will know, as everybody else in this House knows, that at one time in this country we were taught that there were no minerals of any value in the State. Of course, it has turned out, and the discoveries were often made by foreigners that, in fact, we have many valuable minerals and many minerals which are commercially viable. At the moment not only is there considerable prospecting going on but there is a great deal of commercial development of minerals that have already been discovered. There is prospecting onshore and off-shore and one of the reasons for the heresy which was propagated in our schools for 50 years at least, perhaps before the foundation of the State — that there were no commercial minerals—was that there was no proper knowledge of geology or mineralogy; there was nobody to look for minerals that were workable and minerals that were important. One of the basic reasons for this was that our geological collection was never displayed and never available for our school children. It is not a simple thing to rectify but it is something to which we should turn our attention and I would strongly urge on the Minister of State that a beginning is about to be made in Merrion Row in displaying our remarkable geological collection and that more efforts should be made to ensure that a fuller section of the collection should be permanently on display. This would have inestimable benefits in educational and commercial terms.
