Dublin clearly needs more exhibition space to be freed up, particularly for contemporary art, writes Aidan Dunne.

When Hilary Pyle's Yeats: Portrait of an Artistic Family was published in 1997, she saw it as "the first stepping stone en route to a long-awaited Yeats Museum within the National Gallery of Ireland."

The book is a catalogue and richly detailed exploration of the National Gallery's considerable holdings of work by the Yeats family, including, particularly, Jack B Yeats and his father John, a fine portrait painter.

Jack B Yeats is an utterly distinctive artistic personality and easily the most famous Irish painter of the 20th century, not least because his work became synonymous with aspects of Irish cultural identity. His style, as much as the content of his work, is perceived as encapsulating some essential Irishness.

There is a long acknowledged need for a Yeats museum, and the National Gallery, by virtue of its collection and its remit, is the logical place for it. While it was originally suggested that the museum would be located on one of the Georgian houses adjacent to the gallery on Merrion Square, for various reasons the houses were deemed unsuitable. The revised plan was that the museum be accommodated in the gallery's new Millennium Wing on Clare Street.

The original plans for the Millennium Wing, however, were compromised by planning restrictions, and when it opened it was apparent that the building, while impressive in terms of architectural impact and circulation space, is distinctly restricted in terms of exhibition space. So the Yeats family were directed to a room in the main gallery buildings. This room was briefly labelled as the Yeats Museum, though it is no longer so identified. In a sense the family remains in temporary lodgings, ill-equipped to entertain visitors in the way they would like to. The Yeats archive, meanwhile, has found its way to a room in the Millennium Wing.

Does it matter that there is no separate, distinct Yeats museum? There is an argument that Yeats and family should not be segregated from the context of other Irish art. In her book, Pyle mentioned Jack B Yeats's misgivings about museums per se, quoting from Sligo: "the permanent mill stone effect of a sure enough museum".

There is no suggestion, though, that the Yeatses should be embalmed in a moribund display and let lie. The past half century has seen a transformation in museum practice. Rather than representing fixed, canonical values and predefined meanings, they are seen as centres of research and study, where values are tested and meanings explored. Perhaps it would make more sense to talk of a Yeats centre, as designating a hub of varied activity related to the Yeats heritage.

As commentators have pointed out, complacency about the Celtic Tiger should not obscure underlying fundamental changes to the nature of the national economy. Ireland lost 7,000 jobs last year in manufacturing and agriculture. The growth areas were construction and, massively, services. A significant part of those services relate to visitors to Dublin, and in this regard cultural tourism is increasingly important.

Some years back, tentative efforts to establish a major cultural facility in Docklands, based on the provision of a significant body of work by Sean Scully, came to naught. The underlying reason was a lack of political will for the project. Understandable enough, perhaps.

Politicians like to seem to be taking imaginative initiatives but are in reality terrified of doing so: things might go wrong and blame be attached. A little foresight might have put together the inevitable regeneration of Docklands with Dublin's growing popularity as a destination for visitors. A Scully museum, like a Yeats museum, would provide a major focus for a significant proportion of cultural tourists. It would contribute to the current, much vaunted aim of drawing people into Docklands for reasons other than employment.

Clearly Barbara Dawson, director of the Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, realises this. Where politicians feared to tread, she strode in. When the gallery's new wing, a relatively modest affair when compared to the scale of the National Gallery's Millennium Wing, opens in March, it will incorporate a Sean Scully room, designed so as to maintain a degree of autonomy within the context of the building. Some of Scully's work, including the eight pieces that he has donated to the gallery, will always be on view in the room. The name Sean Scully will, like the name Francis Bacon, become indelibly associated with the Hugh Lane, and with Dublin, where he was born.

The Hugh Lane pursued the offer of possession of the Francis Bacon Studio with exceptional zeal and has worked hard to enhance and capitalise on it as an asset. At the same time, it has tried to embrace the sheer diversity of contemporary art activity, and explore its responsibilities as a municipal institution, with a variety of on-site and off-site projects. Part of the Hugh Lane's permanent collection has been on temporary exhibition in the National Gallery during construction work on the extension.

The arrangement raises interesting questions about the allocation of responsibility. The Hugh Lane's collection and exhibitions encompasses modern and contemporary works, though it has tended to emphasise the contemporary aspect. Even with its new extension, the gallery is going to be tight for space. Supposing the loan of works to the National Gallery were extended. Might that not free up some of the facilities on Parnell Square and allow some lively exploration of the late modern and contemporary part of its collection and activities?

There are notable successes in terms of public contemporary exhibition venues in Dublin. IMMA functions very well. Its layout and facilities mean that it can maintain an ambitious mix of exhibitions: more obviously accessible shows drawing in visitors who might then take the time to explore further. It can rotate work from its increasingly impressive collection. The Royal Hibernian Academy Gallagher Gallery has also performed extraordinarily well, managing the transition from academic headquarters to a versatile venue for contemporary art, thereby enriching the cultural texture of the city centre no end. It is determined to build on that success which, incidentally, could be seen as allowing the Douglas Hyde Gallery and the Project Gallery to get on with what they do well.

The temporary exhibition rooms in the National Gallery's Millennium Wing have not yet fulfilled their potential or settled into a satisfactory programming strategy. In a way, the policy of using them for exhibitions with admission charges places the gallery in a quandary. The shows have to be attractive enough to entice people to pay to see them. Yet there is no compelling reason that every show should have an admission charge. Surely it is more important that the valuable space is well used and enhances the gallery's reputation. All the more so when there is so much to be done in terms of the gallery's own collection and Irish art history in general.

Still outstanding is the demand for a visible representative collection of 20th-century Irish art in the city. The various possibilities for the exhibition of such a collection have so far come to nothing. The Arts Council Collection, which would perform this function to a significant degree, lacks a suitable venue. The Custom House might be a potential contender. Related to this is the question of the emergent city in Docklands.

While the Docklands Development Authority avowedly sees the visual arts as integral to an overall cultural strategy, so far such projects as the centre for performing arts and the much vaunted U2 tower have tended to eclipse the visual arts per se. The development plan envisages the emergence of a gallery quarter, not unakin, if on a smaller scale, to New York's Chelsea, and plans are afoot to make this a reality. In terms of large, public venues though, there is no obviouscontender at present. CHQ, though a striking building, is not an ideal visual arts venue and is designed for mixed use.

However, the fact that the current chief executive of the DDDA, Paul Maloney, has a strong interest in and practical experience of social and cultural projects augers well, as does the recent appointment of Mary McCarthy, late of Cork 2005, as visual arts adviser. At the moment, McCarthy says, she is "looking at the needs of the visual arts in the area in terms of work and showing and display." This process includes a space audit. She acknowledges that some people view it as late in the day but is optimistic.

"I think it would have been difficult to do it before now. You might say that so far the business needs of Docklands have been the dominant concern, and now we're setting about balancing those with the area's social and cultural needs."

No small part of that challenge is harnessing the potential of Docklands in the context of the city as a whole. Depending on how things go in the next five years or so, we might be in the midst of one of the most exciting and significant phases of the development of Dublin's arts infrastructure yet.