Chairman:

Issues involving the National Museum of Ireland have come up at the committee repeatedly over the past 18 months. I do not want to make a political issue out of it. Sometimes we can get entrenched very easily in political spats on issues like these. Next door to Leinster House is a building which we look at every day. There are staff in that building who have had difficulties in respect of bullying and harassment for the past ten years. There is an ocean of evidence detailing this. The Minister is aware of that ocean of evidence. It includes the disputed protected disclosure; the disputed letter which was not signed and did not have legal standing; the stacks of reports which have been made to consultants and to HR; the bringing in of the Rape Crisis Centre; psychotherapists stating that major difficulties were ongoing; and the massive amount of money which has been spent on legal battles. I am aware of a legal battle in which two State agents spent €110,000 in the High Court in a battle against one another over whether a particular staff member was employed by the Department. Former directors of the National Museum of Ireland have spoken about fierce misogyny within the organisation. I have never come across a list so long detailing such a negative culture within an organisation.

I understand that it is a difficult space for a Minister to get into. I understand that, first and foremost, the HR departments in those organisations are directly responsible for fixing those issues. However, the truth of the matter is a young woman still has to come out in front of the newspapers, something that is very difficult to do, to seek justice. We saw that just this weekend in the Irish Independent , the Irish Daily Mailand The Sunday Times. In respect of the issues around the Gate Theatre, the Government might have an excuse as that issue arose from left field to a certain extent. The Government might say that it did not realise the difficulties in that area, but the issues in the National Museum are different. The Minister's predecessor and the Minister herself have been inundated with information on this since 2010. The Government cannot say that it did not know. In a way, there is some level of complicity on the Government's part because it has been saturated with information on this issue. I would like to tease this out with the Minister. Is there anything more we can do?