John O'Donoghue (Kerry South, Fianna Fail)

The Arts Council has engaged the visual arts specialist consultant, Oliver Dowling, to establish beyond reasonable doubt the location and provenance of works purchased under the joint purchase scheme with a view to providing conclusive answers to the questions outlined earlier.

The Arts Council does not have a conclusive list of works from CIE's collection that were passed on to the Great Southern Hotel group. I sincerely hope this will be addressed in the context of the current project. The list provided by the Arts Council to the Department is the outcome of research into the CIE collection, which was undertaken by Jane Eckett in 2006 and based on the Arts Council's record of the scheme.

It represents the complete body of works purchased through the joint purchase scheme by either CIE or the Great Southern Hotel group. They are listed as a single collection and the Arts Council is establishing the distinction between works published by the Great Southern Hotels and those purchased by CIE.

On its part, the Great Southern Hotel group has transferred a number of works to de Vere-Whyte's for safe keeping. Some 54 works have been transferred in total, of which approximately 30 are from the original CIE collections. Inaccuracy in various painting titles leads to some confusion. For example, de Vere-Whyte's list Anne Yeats's Eggs in a Basket and this might correspond with what is on the Arts Council record as Anne Yeats's Eggs in a Hat. One man's hat is another man's basket.

The Arts Council, in co-operation with the Great Southern Hotel group, is establishing the provenance and location of the remaining works. The current research will establish if, and to what extent, works were sold on. However, the organisations and agencies that purchased works under the joint purchase scheme were not contractually obliged to offer works for sale to the State.

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