merrion street

Friday, October 11th - Jimmy Deenihan TD, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, has welcomed the signing of a shared services agreement between the National Gallery of Ireland, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the Crawford Art Gallery.

One of the core aims of this agreement is to save the taxpayer money by promoting greater cooperation between the national cultural institutions, done through the sharing of services between each of the three institutions.

Encouraging national cultural institutions to work more closely together, and to achieve savings in this way, was a key recommendation of the Public Services Reform Plan adopted by the Government. Areas covered by the shared services agreement include human resources, procurement, conservation and photography services, collection management including cataloguing and digitisation, storage, insurance, enterprise and marketing.

Minister Deenihan commented:

"My Department, like all Departments, has reduced funding from the taxpayer. This impacts on the level of funding I can allocate to these institutions. It makes good sense to get institutions to work more closely together and to deliver savings that way. I welcome the signing of this agreement which is a core part of the Public Service Reform Plan agreed by Government."