Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North-West Limerick, Fine Gael)

I welcome this initiative of my colleague, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport. The Gathering will be an important event for the tourism sector and one in which my Department and the national cultural institutions which operate under its aegis will be very pleased to participate. As the Deputy is aware, our cultural institutions play an important role in enhancing the cultural tourism product offering of this country and will have a major role to play in the Gathering initiative.

Visitor figures at many of our institutions benchmark favourably against international comparators, having regard to size and resources. For instance, the Irish Museum of Modern Ard, IMMA, welcomed more visitors than the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago or the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide during 2009. The figures for 2010 for the National Museum put it on a par with visitor numbers at the Kremlin Museums in Moscow and Pergamon Museum in Berlin, while the attendance figures at the National Gallery in 2010 place it ahead of many distinguished galleries abroad, including the Serpentine Gallery in London, Tate Liverpool, which I visited last weekend, and MoMA in San Francisco.

In 2010, there were more than 3.5 million visitors to the cultural institutions supported by my Department and I am advised that, in the first six months of this year, visitor numbers were almost 1.8 million, an increase of an aggregate of 6.4% on the same period last year. I understand visitor numbers to our three National Museum sites alone will exceed 1 million this year. This continued growth in numbers is driven by the world class exhibition programmes at these institutions. This year alone, highlights have included the 7th Century Faddan More Psalter at the National Museum, Diego Rivera and Frieda Kahlo at IMMA, Matisse at the Chester Beatty Library, Dexter Dal wood at the National Gallery, Elements at the Science Gallery, the 9/11 Exhibition at Collins Barracks and Richard Hamilton at the Hugh Lane Gallery. The national cultural institutions are of significant economic value and will form a major part of the promotion of the Gathering event.

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