The Minister for Arts, Mr O'Donoghue, refused a request to fund the investigation into claims by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre that some of the Hunt Museum collection in Limerick may have been looted by the Nazis, it has emerged.
No detailed investigations have been carried out by the review group in the six months since its appointment because the question of who will fund its work has not yet been resolved.
According to records released under the Freedom of Information Act, this problem emerged at the very first meeting of the group chaired by Mr Justice Donal Barrington, a retired Supreme Court judge.
While the museum planned to finance the review, the group felt it would not be seen to be independent if the museum paid for its work.
When requesting State funding in March, Mr Barrington told Mr O'Donoghue that the review group "would be happy to hand the burden to the enquiry to an alternative group" if the Minister wanted to pay others to carry out the work.
But Mr O'Donoghue ruled out State funding a month later, saying in a letter to Mr Barrington that State support would be "entirely inappropriate".
It is now understood that the Royal Irish Academy has expressed a tentative willingness to fund the review.
However, no agreement is expected until late September. While the Department deleted the fees suggested by Mr Barrington when releasing the information to The Irish Times, an internal note said "such remuneration would not be acceptable if we were in charge of the group".
The secretary general of the Department, Mr Philip Furlong, said in a separate note that there was "absolutely no question" of entertaining an open-ended per diem funding arrangement which was proposed by the group.
While not disclosing the fees he had sought, Mr Barrington said yesterday that the figures he mentioned were suggested in the context of a negotiation which did not proceed.
"I was surprised that he showed no interest," he said, referring to Mr O'Donoghue.
He went on to say that he did not feel entitled to commence the detailed work of the inquiry when he did not know if would be in a position to follow the work through.
The review group was appointed after the Paris office of the Wiesenthal Centre complained in a letter to the President, Mrs McAleese, that some of the collection may have been stolen by the Nazis.
The centre has not provided any evidence to back up its claims and made no claim about any specific item in the museum. It has indicated that it will not co-operate with the inquiry.
The claims are denied by the family of the couple who amassed the collection, the late John Hunt and his late wife Gertrude.
Mr Barrington wrote to Mr O'Donoghue in March to say the allegations were extremely serious and raised "extremely emotional matters" for the Hunt family and the Wiesenthal Centre.
"In practical terms this means that we must look for funding from the State. We also feel that it would add greatly to our authority if we were seen to act under the auspices of your Department," he said.
"As this enquiry arose out of a letter from the Wiesenthal Centre to the President of Ireland, the good name of the State is, inevitably, involved.
"This good name rests not so much on the nature of the allegations being made concerning the integrity of the Hunt Collection, as on the way the State is seen to deal with them."
The Minister said in a letter to the museum's chairman, Mr George Stacpoole, that he was "surprised" at request for State funding.
"You will appreciate that, in order to preserve the integrity of the process that is now under way, my Department cannot make any contribution towards the cost of the review, or, indeed, be associated with it in any way."
Other records show that Wiesenthal Centre's international director, Dr Shimon Samuels, met in the Department last June with the Minister's special adviser, Mr Fiach MacConghail.
A minute of the meeting said Dr Samuels restated the centre's position on the review. He said the centre wished to act as a control "and would examine the completed report to ascertain if it agreed with the information available to the centre". He was told "it would not be possible for the Minister to act on the report produced by the review group if he or the Department became involved in an earlier stage".
