Mr. Liam Bradley:

I echo what both speakers have said. Senator Warfield asked a very pertinent question. We have already mentioned the museum standards programme which the entire Local Authority Museum Network has been involved in for many years. I began working in museums nearly 20 years ago and we have gone from pilot studies all the way through. A core part of that is care of collections. It has certainly benefited all of the local authority museums in going to respective councils to make the case for additional funding not only for storage but for collection care. It is that part of the story people do not see that often. We do not get the opportunity to bring them in to see that key part of the work that puts an object on display. One can never have enough storage. We are collecting institutions and collect more objects. We have collections policies in place to help us choose what we want, but collections management is key to what museums do. It is the main part. We have mentioned access to collections, which is another part. We are working on storage with a lot of museums, including our colleagues here from Carlow and Tipperary.

The idea of getting access to the stores is such an integral part of whole offering of a museum. We do all the other programmes but the key part we want people to remember consciously is that museums are collections-based institutions. Museums are unique in that sense. They have collections that will be stored for this and future generations. I wanted to make that point in this context. There can never be enough funding for storage. We will always need more. There are always backlogs in the registration and management of the collections, but thanks to the museums standards programme, many museums are ensuring they bring those standards up to specification.