The Office of Public Works (OPW) paid more than €300,000 in legal fees to a private charity in an arbitration case on the proposed building of a national children’s science museum in Dublin.
Details of the legal costs have emerged amid concerns that the final bill for the long-stalled project will be more than €70 million.
OPW chairman John Conlon wrote to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) this week disclosing that the OPW was required to pay the legal costs of both sides in an arbitration process in 2013: €255,252 for its own costs and €307,000 for those of the Irish Children’s Museum Limited (ICML), a charity that has been campaigning for more than a quarter of a century for such a facility to be established.
Mr Conlon also disclosed that an agreement to build the museum next door to the National Concert Hall on Earlsfort Terrace was reached in advance of scheduled arbitration hearings, so no hearings took place.
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At the time, the estimated cost of the project was €26 million but this has since increased almost three-fold.
Committee member Catherine Murphy warned this weekend the project could turn into a “mini national children’s hospital”.
The Social Democrats TD expressed concern that the final cost to the State could well be in excess of €70 million.
“There is a mission creep here. This started out as something much more modest, in terms of the draw on the finances of the State, and now we are getting into very large figures for something that is potentially duplicating something else.”
Speaking at the committee, she said a private charity “has its foot on the throat of the State”.
“We will have no control over a private charity and how it runs the museum even though the State has provided the [funding] ... It may well be an exceptional museum but it’s completely out of our control,” she said.
Details were also given in the letter relating to a second arbitration case taken by ICML – which also acts under the name the National Children’s Science Centre (NCSC) – in 2020 after delays in commencing the development. It sought to compel the OPW to proceed with, and complete, a building “that is fit for purpose for use as a first-class interactive science museum for children”. The arbitrator issued an interim order in 2022 and planning permission was granted this year.
The OPW chairman was not in a position to provide information to the PAC on the cost of this arbitration case, or if the OPW will be compelled to pay the costs of the charity as it did in 2013.
He said that “arbitration on this matter is still to be finalised”. There is a likelihood that the legal costs associated with this latest arbitration case, which has been ongoing for four years, will be greater than those of the 2013 process.
NCSC chief executive Barbara Galavan said this weekend that the charity had provided two business cases to the Government, one in 2003 and one in 2018. She said the estimated fit-out cost of the museum would be €25 million, which the charity would provide through fundraising and sponsorship.
“The museum does not expect ongoing funding from the State in relation to current and ongoing expenditure once it begins to operate. As with all publicly owned buildings, the maintenance of the building [will be] the responsibility of the lessor, which is the OPW.”
She said the museum will align with the “Government’s vision for STEM [science, technology, engineering, and maths] education, which aspires to make Ireland internationally recognised for providing high-quality STEM education experiences”.
Responding to criticism of the charity for pursuing a legal route, Ms Galavan said: “We would much prefer not to have gone to arbitration ... We are the only country in the OECD without a major science centre.”
The original arbitration process came about when the charity sought to compel the OPW to honour a licence of agreement signed in 2003 which bound the State, through the OPW, to provide the charity with a building.
The PAC, which is the public spending watchdog, has been investigating spending on this project, which was first mooted as far back as 1998. Members of the committee have expressed concern that a private charity has been in a position to direct the State to provide it with a building at such a high cost to the Exchequer.
PAC members have also questioned if there is a need for such a museum, given that a privately run science-themed facility now exists, the Explorium Museum in south Co Dublin.
The NCSC has a number of well-known people on its board including the activist and entrepreneur Ali Hewson and the TCD scientist Prof Luke O’Neill. Prof O’Neill told RTÉ Prime Time recently that it would be one of the best children’s science museums in the world and said it would attract private funding from the pharmaceutical industry.
Ms Galavan said in relation to funding sources: “We will operate an ethical funding policy which will not permit the centre to be beholden to any one company or sector.”
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