Committee Reports > List of Committees > Dáil > 1953 > Committee of Public Accounts > Report - Appropriation Accounts 1950 - 1951

APPENDIX XII.

LOAN OF OBSOLETE EXHIBITION CASES BY NATIONAL MUSEUM.

Rúnaí,

An Roinn Oideachais.

Qns. 334-340, page 79.

I am directed by the Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts to refer to the note on the Vote for Science and Art on page 121 of the Appropriation Accounts for the year ended 31st March, 1951, relative to the seventy obsolete exhibition cases which were loaned from the National Museum and to request you to state, for the information of the Committee, (a) the date of purchase; (b) the original cost of the cases; (c) what they would now cost to make; (d) the circumstances under which they became obsolete, e.g., was it due to the type of material used in their manufacture or to their shape? and (e) if they are now obsolete, if they are open for sale to local committees who want to start museums in provincial towns.

(Signed) J. C. SMYTH,

Cléireach an Choiste,

25ú Iúil, 1952. Tigh Laighean.

Cléireach,

Coiste um Chuntais Phoiblí.

In reply to yours of the 25th instant in reference to the seventy obsolete exhibition cases loaned from the National Museum, I am to say (a) that this Department has no record of the actual date or dates of purchase, as the cases in question formed part of the equipment of the Museum of Science and Art when it was opened to the public in 1890; (b) that there is no record in this Department of the initial cost of the cases; (c) that it would not be feasible to give an estimate of the cost of similar cases at the present times, as such cases are not being assembled and the Museum has not had occasion to purchase any exhibition cases of these types for many years; (d) that the cases are obsolete in design and are of the kind described in the Bodkin Report of 1949 as “make-shift and out of fashion,” and in the Report of the Board of Visitors for 1945/46 as being “out-of-date”; they are also unsuited to the crowded exhibition conditions of the National Museum because they require more floor space than can be spared; (e) that no arrangements are in contemplation for the sale of any of these cases, because in the event of additional buildings being placed at the disposal of the Museum at some future date there might be a possibility of their being used for exhibition purposes.

(Signed) M. BREATHNACH,