Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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80. To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if any progress has been made on the proposal contained in the comprehensive Review of Expendidure 2012-2014 on shared finance services and HR services across national cultural institutions; the progress and the savings that would be made by the implememtation of this proposal. [44237/13]

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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105. To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the cost of conservation, cleaning and maintenance across the State's cultural institutions; if further consideration has been given to the proposals in the comprehensive review of expenditure to put in place a structure along the lines of the Art Lab proposals in Australia, and the income that could be generated in that way. [44238/13]

Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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109. To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if any progress has been made on the proposal contained in the comprehensive review of expenditure 2012-2014 on having a single event manager post which could promote the facilities in the national cultural institutions under one brand; the progress of same; the savings that would be made by the implementation of this proposal; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44240/13]

Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North-West Limerick, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 80, 105 and 109 together.

I refer the Deputies to my reply to Questions 37, 45, 56 and 59 on 18 September and to today's Question No 58.

As the Deputies may be aware, as part of the Comprehensive Review of Expenditure 2012–2014, my Department considered a range of possible options for savings in respect of its Arts and Culture programme area. This included a website portal and joint commercial and marketing strategy. Under the Croke Park and Haddington Road reform programme, we have now gone beyond what was contemplated by the Comprehensive Review of Expenditure. Indeed, savings of the order of 20-25% in the Exchequer allocations to the cultural institutions have been made since 2010.

In tandem the Government had agreed a range of reforms under the Public Service Reform Plan 2011 for a number of the national cultural institutions under the aegis of my Department. The focus within my Department and the national cultural institutions has been concentrated on the implementation of the Reform Plan and there has been an intensive engagement by all in that process. I have previously advised the House of the shared service models that are being developed for the national cultural institutions through my Department in relation to corporate support services and, by formal inter-institutional agreement, in relation to operational services. For example, the National Museum of Ireland recently agreed a Shared Service Agreement on HR shared services and my Department has set up a HR Shared Services Unit to deliver on that.

The Deputies may also wish to note that the National Gallery of Ireland, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Crawford Art Gallery Cork have been working more closely and this has recently been formally codified by way of a Shared Services Agreement. This commits each institution to working more closely together in a range of areas including human resources, procurement, conservation and photography services, collection management including cataloguing and digitisation, storage, insurance, enterprise and marketing.

Preliminary estimates for savings provided to me earlier this year indicate that approximately €100,000 will have been saved over the course of 2012 and 2013 through the shared services agenda at the three Galleries. As I outlined previously, in overall terms it is expected that operational and support savings in the region of approximately €1 million will be initially realised from the reform programme across the institutions involved, which are funded from my Department's Vote Group, with further savings to be identified as the various cost efficiencies are implemented. This is all against the backdrop of respecting the programming, curatorial and operational independence of the directors.