Ms Lynn Scarff:

I thank the Chairman. I thank Deputy Smyth for her questions. First I will address her question on visitor numbers. Visitor numbers increased at a time when resources were dropping, which is a statement to the team that existed in the National Museum of Ireland prior to my time. As many members know, I am a recent appointee in the role of director. It is the people with whom I work day to day, such as my colleague, Ms Sikora, and my colleagues in the Public Gallery who continued to deliver programming during a period of serious constraints. To address the other question around history, the increasing number of visitors tells us that there is a significant desire and interest among audiences for the kinds of experiences that we provide in our museum and it demonstrates that what is crucial for us as organisations is to think about our relevance to that.

I will answer the Deputy's history question from a personal perspective. I, too, share the view that history is a crucial subject, but I also think that as we move forward in education and people are thinking of ways that there can be a trans-disciplinary approach to learning, our museums and cultural spaces can be the platforms by which we do that. Unfortunately, what tends to happen in these kinds of scenarios is that there is very siloed thinking where there is a delivery and a formal education subject that is delivered by the Department of Education and Skills or education experts without including a more rounded, broader, non-formal learning environment, such as museums, art spaces, cultural spaces and local museums. If we think about the kind of learning environment that many of our young children are in today, that learning ecosystem is diverse. It involves local museums, local sports clubs, community groups, art galleries and formal education. There is a real onus on us as people who are working in this sector to think about that ecosystem of learning and how we mutually support that. National initiatives can offer that opportunity. Mr. Bradley spoke very eloquently about the opportunities that were afforded by things like Creative Ireland to bring disparate groups of people together to take a unified approach to something. When we are faced with issues like this around history, it is worth thinking about that meeting of formal and non-formal learning and reflecting back the fact that visitor numbers are growing, not only in the National Museum of Ireland but across all our museum spaces. The interest is growing and it behoves us to think about how we support that more.