Taoiseach: National Gallery has to answer for buying €125k scanner without having space for it

Micheál Martin said The National Gallery 'hosts many treasures, but it is incomprehensible that it would have proceeded under a digitisation scheme to purchase a scanner and not have organised in advance how that scanner would be deployed in terms of a lead-lined room and so on'. File picture

It is "incomprehensible" that the National Gallery would purchase a €125,000 scanner without having space to house it, the Taoiseach has said.

Micheál Martin strongly criticised the fact that the machine has been left unused for almost eight years, saying it is "not acceptable".

The National Gallery purchased the scanner in 2017. However, it has not been utilised as a suitable room could not be found to accommodate it.

Mr Martin has called on the Public Accounts Committee to examine the spending, which was unearthed by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

He told the Dáil: "The National Gallery is a very important national institution. People from across the country derive great joy and benefit from it. 

"It hosts many treasures, but it is incomprehensible that it would have proceeded under a digitisation scheme to purchase a scanner and not have organised in advance how that scanner would be deployed in terms of a lead-lined room and so on. That is not acceptable.

"Stories and events of this kind make people irate and very angry, but we also have to take on board the fact that there have been a lot of good projects."

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He added that the gallery and those responsible have to "answer" for spending.

However, Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald said: "In this Government culture of waste and incompetence it seems nobody is responsible."

Raising a number of other controversies, including an €800,000 printer that was bought for the Oireachtas in 2018 but didn't fit into the designated room, she said: "The Government can point the finger at anybody and everybody under the sun for the most expensive bike shed, security hut, perimeter wall, but let us be clear about this, the buck stops with the Government."

Meanwhile, arts minister Patrick O’Donovan has appointed professor Niamh Brennan to chair a three-person board to examine spending and corporate governance at the Arts Council.

He also presented the terms of reference for the external review to Cabinet, following the revelation that the Arts Council had spent €6.7m on an abandoned IT project.