MR. SULLIVANasked the Vice President of the Council of Education, If it is the fact that another year has been lost without effecting the promised establishment of a National Museum and Institute of Science and Art for Ireland; and, whether the failure of the Government has not, in this instance, resulted from an attempt to establish a scheme essentially different from the promise of the Government, through the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1868, and from the terms of the Resolution brought before this House by the honourable Member 1809 for Louth and the honourable Member for Dublin in 1875?
§ VISCOUNT SANDONSir, no one has a better right than the hon. Gentleman to ask a Question on the subject of Science and Art arrangements for Ireland, as he has for a long time taken a most useful interest in this subject. The Government regrets that probably another year must elapse before carrying out their proposal to establish a Science and Art Museum in Dublin. But when it is remembered that the scheme implies an expenditure of something like £100,000 from the Imperial Exchequer in aid of this large undertaking, which we hope will be an important addition to the scientific and artistic advantages of Dublin, it can hardly be expected that a matter of this magnitude should be settled very rapidly. A good deal of misapprehension has existed on the subject; but I believe these misapprehensions have been removed by a speech made by the Lord President in "another place." The plan is, undoubtedly, different from the proposal of Her Majesty's Government in 1868, but it differs in so far as Lord Kildare's Commission, composed of most distinguished Irishmen, reported against the proposal of 1868. It only varies in minor details from the plans proposed by the hon. Member for Louth and the hon. Member for Dublin in 1875, and is in accordance, in my opinion, with the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the same occasion, in consequence of which the Resolution of the hon. Member for Louth was withdrawn. I have a good hope that, by further friendly communications with the different parties concerned in Dublin, we should be able to confer what we believe will be a great benefit upon that city, but we should not be justified in making the large expenditure of public money proposed, which I need hardly say the Exchequer will not readily defray, unless we were quite assured that we had a thoroughly satisfactory scheme. I may, however, say that it is the intention of the Government to bring in a Bill next Session to provide for the site of the new institution.