The Department of Arts has written to the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) advising it that the State must be given first option on purchasing valuable artworks that used to hang in the Great Southern Hotels chain.
Following the removal of 54 paintings from the hotels last month, which were sent to a Dublin auctioneers for valuation, the Minister for Arts, John O'Donoghue, directed his department to raise the issue with the DAA, which is in the process of selling the hotels. In a letter sent earlier this month to DAA chief executive Declan Collier, the department's assistant secretary general Niall Ó Donnchú warned that some of the paintings were "jointly owned" by the Arts Council, which had co-financed the purchase of paintings for State bodies in the 1960s and 1970s.
The letter states that the State agencies were informed in a circular some years ago that "in the event of art valued at more than €10,000 being put on the market by a State entity that the State . . . had to be given first option on that art". The Arts Council provided funding of nearly £8,000 in the 1960s and 1970s for the purchase by the hotels of upwards of 143 paintings, now estimated to be worth millions of euro. The collection has now been dispersed among various CIÉ companies, with a maximum of 54 remaining in the hands of the hotel group. A DAA spokesman said no decision had been made on the sale of the art work and that any decision would be made in consultation with the Government and the Arts Council.