Ms Gina O'Kelly:

The Irish Museums Association has very deliberately been working on the issue of Brexit and the museum sector over the past year and a half in particular with one of our colleagues from Ulster University. We work quite closely with third level academics to produce research. We produced a report earlier this year on the impact of Brexit on the museum sector entitled Bridge over Brexit. Its is still functioning.

We recently had the pleasure of having Mr. Bradley form part of a panel at a session in Belfast with an audience of 700 at which some of the impacts of Brexit were discussed. Obviously, it will have an impact across the board. We are considering the impact on funding. Many museums in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland apply for EU funding, and when a museum needs a partner, it is natural for it to look to a museum on the other side of the Border because of our shared history, cultural markers and identity.Brexit will cause issues in terms of storage. We have heard anecdotal information of collections or part thereof being moved to Dublin, particularly in the corporate collections and independent museums sectors. There is no denying that it will have a huge impact, although we are unsure what that will entail. One of the aims of this project was to identify those issues and to support and acknowledge some of the cross-Border partnerships that have existed and what they have meant for our community in terms of social inclusion, peace and reconciliation. Of course, Mr. Blair has significant expertise in this area.

One of our recommendations was that museums audit themselves. That will be key. We have made guidelines available for museums to do so and see where Brexit will impact on them. It will impact on some museums more than on others but it will have a significant impact, especially in the Border counties, not only on funding but also on staff, resources and skills, which is one of the areas on which the Irish Museums Association aims to work. It supports the museum standards programme for Ireland accreditation by providing training and upskilling and facilitating the exchange of information. We work very closely with our partners in providing those services. Further training needs to be made available to some of our staff to deal with mobility of collections.