'Our learners are adults, not children': Department washes its hands of children's science centre

A visualisation of the proposed national children’s science centre. The saga of the museum stretches back more than 20 years when the OPW first committed to delivering the project in conjunction with a private consortium, Irish Children's Museum Limited. Photo: 3ddesignbureau.com

The Department of Further Education has distanced itself from any association with the troubled €70m National Children's Science Centre, arguing its concern is “adults, not children”.

In a letter to the head of the Office of Public Works John Conlon in June, secretary general of the Department of Further Education, Colm O'Reardon, noted that when first set up in 2024 the body had received details of all the legacy issues it would hold responsibility for.

"This project was not among those matters for which (the department) took responsibility," Mr O'Reardon wrote.

"While I can appreciate the urgency of finding a solution to this matter, it is not within the remit of this department or its current budgetary considerations to assume any responsibility for the ongoing management of this project."

The saga of the national children's science museum stretches back more than 20 years when the OPW first committed to delivering the project in conjunction with a private consortium, Irish Children's Museum Limited.

While the project was shelved in response to the 2008 global financial crisis, ICML has since 2013 prevailed in two separate arbitration proceedings leaving the OPW effectively legally obligated to deliver the museum — on the site of the National Concert Hall in central south Dublin — by December 2029.

Previously, Mr Conlon acknowledged to the Public Accounts Committee that no sponsoring agency could be found to build the museum.

Last June, the secretary general of the OPW's parent body the Department of Public Expenditure (DPER), David Moloney, told the PAC that "all options" were being considered in terms of the project, with several potentially "appropriate" departments having been identified, including Further Education.

Mr O'Reardon's letter to the OPW represents an attempt to put a halt to that speculation.

He noted that the overall remit for science, technology, engineering and mathematics education has lain with the Department of Education since 2007, while a 2019 memo to DPER outlines that, at the time, primary responsibility for the proposed museum rested with the OPW and the Department of Culture.

"DFHERIS has no experience of running cultural institutions," the secretary general wrote.

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"The mandate we received from Government was to focus on enhancing the further and higher education systems and the research ecosystem," he said. "Accordingly, our learners are adults, not children."

Since 2003, the children's museum's budget has spiralled from an initial €14m to its most recently assigned level of €70.4m.

Roughly €5m has been spent on the project to date over the past 20 years, while the OPW remains legally obliged to carry out its construction after giving a legally-binding commitment to do so to the ICML in 2013.

In the meantime, a separate private children's science museum — known as Explorium — was established at Sandyford in south Dublin in 2018.