NONE of the national cultural institutions under his aegis have the resources they need and deserve, Mr Michael D. Higgins has said.
The Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht was speaking at a ceremony to hand over to the National Library the collected papers of the De Vesci family from the 17th century to the present day.
Things were improving, said Mr Higgins. Last year the National Library had been allocated three times the funds it had received in 1992. Staff numbers had increased by 13 per cent, although he would not regard it as satisfactory.
The National Library director, Mrs Patricia Donlon, said the De Vesci archive's more than 50,000 documents was the library's most important acquisition in several decades. It has been housed at the Northern Ireland Public Record Office since Viscount De Vesci moved from the family home in Abbeyleix, Co Laois.
"The Co Laois estate of the De Vesci family was compact and concentrated, and for this reason this `Big House' archive documents the life of an entire community, including the lives of many, many very ordinary people," said Mr Higgins.
At the larger political level the papers were of great interest to students of previously neglected areas of Irish social history, he said. Two of the De Vesci ancestors were people of national importance Archbishop John Vesey, a prominent figure in the Church of Ireland, and Denny Muschamp, one of Ireland's earliest Revenue Commissioners.