If I may join the last two Deputies, as an ordinary citizen of this country, I would also like to put in a word. I would like to know, among other things, what has happened as a result of the inquiry carried out in relation to the Museum and other kindred institutions. As far as the general public are concerned, we have been left very much without information. I hope the Minister will tell us something in that respect. One point that strikes me about the Museum, from what I have seen and learned of it, is that quite apart from the question of staffing, to which my honourable friends have referred, there is another aspect which. I think, is of interest, and that is the actual manner in which objects of historical and national importance are acquired, or not acquired, for the Museum. I fancy that the story of the Navan maces has been told in this House before now. I do not propose to go into it at any length, and I only want to give it as an illustration of how not to do a thing. Let me remind the House of what occurred in that instance.
As I understand, some few years ago there were offered to the Museum two valuable specimens of, I think, early 17th century work—the Navan maces. They were offered to the Museum, I am informed, by a Dublin dealer, judged by what happened afterwards, at a very moderate sum. I understand that the keeper of the Museum has no discretion to purchase on his own account, although he is something of an expert, or he would not be there, without reference to the Minister's Department. I understand that someone in the Minister's Department discovered that the sum at which the maces were offered to the Museum was considerably in excess of the sum for which they were acquired by the dealer. The official in question seems to have jumped to the conclusion, to put it vulgarly, that the Museum was being done in the eye, and he thereupon decided that the purchase must not take place. Subsequently, if my information is correct, the dealer found no difficulty in disposing of these maces at a considerably greater sum than that for which he had offered them to the Museum. I believe they later changed hands for a sum which was about four times that at which they had been offered to the Museum. What is done is done, and I do not want to make an attack upon anybody, but I mention the matter as an illustration of how not to do it and as a warning for the future. These were objects not only of great artistic value for any museum, but they were also objects of very special interest to the National Museum in this country, because they were associated with an ancient Irish town, and they were the work of an old Dublin silversmith in the early part of that century.
If my information is correct, the Director of the National Gallery has a discretion in purchasing a picture amounting, I think, but I am not quite certain of the figure, to something like £1,500. I believe that is a very proper discretion and a discretion which he uses with very great benefit to the country and to his collection. It appears to me somewhat absurd that whereas the Director of the National Gallery has that discretion, the Keeper of the Museum should be confined to a sum which would barely suffice for the purchase of the smallest Georgian snuff box. It is quite obvious that if every purchase of that kind is liable to be delayed and overruled by officials who, whatever their qualifications are, cannot be expected to be experts in this matter, we shall lose a great deal more in the same way in the future. That is very likely. I would like to hear from the Minister that he has come to a decision to alter that state of affairs. I do not know that I am an inveterate museum-goer. I am not very fond, I confess, of museums which set out to gather into their net every sort of fish, every kind of thing from every sort of country. Particularly I think it is foolish, in my judgment, at all events, for small, poor countries to enter into competition with great and wealthy countries in that matter. We cannot hope here in the Saorstát to compete successfully against New York or the British Museum or the Louvre. But there can be very interesting and very important collections got together by confining them within narrow limits. I think one of the most interesting museums I was ever in was not very far from Paris in St. Germain-en-Laye. It belongs to the little commune. I think it is only a room or two. It would be absurd for a museum there to enter into competition with the Louvre—but the interest of the collection there is that every object in it is connected with the history of St. Germain-en-Laye, from the tablet on the wall to the memory of the Irish Secretary of James II. to the collection of portraits, books, engravings, plans and maps, all connected with the town. Now, on an intermediate scale, it seems to me that the object of our museum should be, what its name implies, mainly national. I do not think we should confine our interests mainly to Irish antiquity. We should obtain for that museum everything which is of historic interest to Ireland and we ought even include other things concentrating upon that purpose. We ought to be sure that we have got at the head of the Museum men who know thoroughly what they are doing in that matter, and, having got them, then we ought give them proper discretion, and we ought not, in the future, as we have done in the past, lose articles which, important as they are from the point of any museum, are doubly and trebly important from the point of view of the National Museum of Ireland.
