Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

This is the third summer our Natural History Museum, one of our major attractions, will be closed. There has been a disappointing lack of activity in respect of it, which has landed us in a position where we are worse off than we were previously. The replacement of the staircase that collapsed was postponed in order to include additional work to improve access, namely, to provide access for people with disabilities to toilets on the second floor, and to provide a coffee shop. It is now planned to reopen the museum but the Minister failed to mention that 35% less exhibition space will be available than was available before this work started due to the need to address fire and safety risks.

Does the Minister agree it is a travesty that less exhibition space will be available when the purpose of this work and the debate on all the cultural institutions has been on increasing exhibition and storage space? Despite the €15 million that was provided in the national development plan for this work alone, less exhibition space will be available in the museum. Funding for it has fallen to €1.5 million and most of it, as the Minister said, has been used to provide fire evacuation procedures. Effectively, there has been no net increase in the exhibition space or in anything to attract people to the museum. Even the museum's biggest attraction, the Dodo skeleton, will not be accessible because it is in part of the exhibition space that will be cut off. There is more activity from the Dodo than there has been from the Minister's Department on this project.

Will the Minister be in a position to give a guarantee in writing that the staff will require to ensure that when this greatly reduced facility is opened it will be safe to open from both the staff and the public, bearing in mind that the reason it closed in the first place was the collapse of the staircase?

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