The Government intends to create a £10 million fund for acquiring artefacts of significant heritage value. The fund will be available to the State's main cultural institutions.
The Minister for Arts, Ms de Valera, has announced the publication of a Bill to establish the fund on a statutory basis. This year the intention is that £3 million will be made available by the Oireachtas to establish this new resource.
Over the following three years £2 million would be added to the fund annually, with a final £1 million provided in 2005.
Since this would be a rolling fund, money not used in any one year would be carried over to the next.
The heritage fund will provide financial assistance to five institutions: the National Museum of Ireland, the National Library, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery and the National Archives. They will be able to draw on the money to acquire items such as manuscripts, books and works of art that are deemed to be of national importance, rare and costly.
Any item under consideration is required to have a valuation above £250,000. While all bodies have an annual acquisitions budget, this sum is now rarely substantial enough to ensure items of major significance can be bought on the open market. The rising value of Irish art during the past decade has meant, for example, that the National Gallery has been unable to enhance its holdings, because private collectors are often prepared to pay more.
Where new records have been set for Irish art at auction, these have invariably been due to individuals rather than institutions.
The most recent instance of inadequate funding imperilling a potential acquisition here arose last December, when the National Library was anxious to purchase James Joyce's manuscript of the "Circe" episode from Ulysses but did not have the necessary financial resources.
However, when the document was auctioned by Christie's in New York Ms de Valera's Department provided additional money and the library bought the lot for $1.4 million.
The new fund is expected to make such purchases more usual and ensure that not only do works of significance remain in the State but also, as in the case of the "Circe" manuscript, items seemingly lost to Ireland can be brought back.
In future, recommendations on acquisitions drawing on the heritage fund would be made to the Minister by the Council of National Cultural Institutions. This organisation includes not only the directors of the bodies benefiting from the fund, but also those of the National Concert Hall, the Abbey Theatre, the Arts Council, the Chester Beatty Library and the Heritage Council.