Seanad move surprises museum director

A MAMMOTH row has broken out over plans to move the Seanad into the Natural History Museum this summer while the refurbishment of Leinster House takes place.

Museum director Dr Pat Wallace complained that he only heard the details of the plan in media reports yesterday and was “in fear” for the safety of exhibits, including the skeletons of a blue whale and a woolly mammoth among the two million specimens housed there.

“As I stand now I don’t have an alternative place to go. I don’t have the eight or nine people it would take to document every specimen before a move. I have no transport and no storage,” said Dr Wallace.

“It’s an enormous task, a very big logistical problem and I’m supposed to complete it by July yet the first I hear of it is when I switched on the radio this morning.”

The 15-month move will allow for reconstruction works on the 261-year-old building which has “serious structural problems”.

Top floor offices were vacated late last year when the floors there were found to be unsound but the safety survey that followed discovered problems throughout the former mansion.

Areas housing the reception, Seanad chamber, numerous support offices, offices of the Clerks of the Dáil and Seanad and the Ceann Comhairle will all have to be revamped at a cost expected to run into several million euro. The newer annex housing the Dáil chamber and bar and the modern complex used by Oireachtas Committees will not be affected.

Despite the enormous logistical exercise of vacating rooms and moving to alternative accommodation, many senators were also in the dark about the plans.

Fine Gael senator Jerry Buttimer said it was wrong to expect a museum to make way for the Seanad. “Dr Wallace should not be put under pressure like this. It’s surely possible to find an alternative venue,” he said.

The museum has been closed to the public since a staircase collapsed last July.