No sponsor to build €70m science museum

Just under €4.3m has been spent on the project to date. Picture: Sasko Lazarov

The head of the OPW has said while he understands its commitment to constructing a €70m children’s science museum in Dublin, no sponsoring body can be found to build it.

John Conlon, chair of the OPW, the state agency with responsibility for managing the country’s property portfolio, will on Thursday tell the Public Accounts Committee that in terms of the science museum, the OPW’s role is that of a contracting authority and nothing further, with no capacity to source funding to advance the project.

“As chairman of the OPW, I have met with, and advised representatives of ICML [Irish Children’s Museum Limited, the consortium behind the proposed project] that, while I fully accept that there is a binding arbitration award on the OPW, on behalf of the State, the fact remains that there is no sponsoring authority to fund the development of the project,” Mr Conlon is expected to say.

He will say that the budget for the OPW includes allocations for flood risk management and the estate portfolio, but “does not provide capital funding for projects outside of these defined expenditure programmes”.

Mr Conlon will further stress that even if a sponsoring authority can be found, the fundamentals of the project will require “evaluation by a future sponsoring department”.

Last September, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) Seamus McCarthy was critical of the OPW’s commitment to build the museum in his annual report, saying it had had no authority to approve the project and in doing so had exposed the State to “unnecessary risk”.

In a special report detailing the C&AG’s investigation of the project, Mr McCarthy said that when agreeing to construct the museum in 2003, the OPW should have sought specific permission from the Department of Finance to that end, but had neglected to do so.

At the time, the proposed building on Earlsfort Terrace in Dublin’s south centre was budgeted at €14.3m, a figure that rose to €26m in 2013 before reaching its current level of €70.4m.

In his statement to PAC, Mr Conlon is expected to say that he shares “the key learnings identified” by the C&AG which indicate that “the roles and responsibilities of project sponsor and contracting authority should have been clearly defined from the outset”.

“More robust project governance, with a clearly identified project sponsor, would have provided safeguards in respect of the other clear learnings from this project, around the scope of the project, in addition to the appropriate oversight of costs,” he will say.

While just under €4.3m has been spent on the project to date over the past 20 years, the OPW remains legally obliged to carry out the museum's construction after giving a legally-binding commitment to do so to the ICML in 2013. 

That commitment has since been tested and enforced by the charity following two separate arbitration processes.

It is understood the first arbitration resulted from the OPW being requested to honour the terms of the lease it first signed with the ICML in 2003.

A meeting of the PAC with the OPW in July 2024 heard repeatedly that the OPW had no say in whether or not the building was needed, just that it was obligated to build it.