Ms Lynn Scarff:

I will take the initial question on visitor numbers. What we have seen has been an interesting story within the national cultural institutions and the four museum sites. When we reopened we had to put in a number of health and safety measures to ensure our visitors had a safe visit to the museum. In general terms, that meant, depending on the museum building or site, our capacity was limited to 50% to 60% of what it normally would be. These were all pre-booked visits. People pre-booked free tickets for a particular time. At most peak times when one would expect people to be out and about, particularly at the weekends and over July and August when we are open, we operate at the top of that 60% capacity. That was the case for our museum of archaeology, our museum of country life and our museum of decorative arts and history in Collins Barracks.

In the figures for, say, the museum of decorative arts and history, what was interesting was that the number of visitors coming from local communities was quite high. In the case of that museum, it was 34%, and 10% were from within walking distance. That speaks to the engagement of local audiences with their NCIs and to the work we can do around engaging our communities

On the tourism question, which is an important element, the greatest drop for us was in our museum of archaeology in Kildare Street, which would normally have 70% of its visitors as international tourists. That experienced the greatest drop from its normal August figures. It began to grow with local and domestic visits but people seem to be returning more to the museum sites in their local community. There is a need for us to rethink those visitor offerings that may in the past have been seen more as international offerings and think about how they are welcoming to a local and domestic audience. That is particularly for some of the independent museums, visitor centres and sites linked to the IMA or the Association of Visitor Experiences and Attractions, AVEA, which rely very much on ticketing income. A business model needs to be developed that can scale up as international tourists return but that is sustainable in responding to local communities.

The Senator mentioned our budget for 2022. We have submitted our budget estimates and are hopeful we will be able to match the resources against our strategic plan and what we wish to do in the national museum. Senator Warfield asked about staffing numbers in the museum and I did not answer that question but, to give an indication, the National Museum of Scotland, which has a slightly smaller collection than ours and has a number of sites, has a staff of 480, while the National Museum of Ireland has a staff of 181 across 4 public sites and one collections resource. The disparity is evident. It is not all about funding and resources. There are sensible ways we can collaborate and examine using our resources wisely and there are opportunities to do that, but it shows in stark numbers the difference that exists.