After two decades as director of the National Museum of Ireland, Dr Pat Wallace tells Fiona McCannwhy he feels there are still battles to be fought to fund and modernise the institution to the proper standard

WITH CAREER-CHANGING a common feature of an ever-shifting job market, few people stay in the same position for longer than two years these days, let alone 20. Yet that's precisely how long the National Museum of Ireland's director, Dr Pat Wallace, has been at the institution's helm, having presided over huge changes and a massive expansion that has seen the number of branches of the museum double, staff numbers treble and the growth of visitor numbers to one million a year.

"It's an awful long time," admits Wallace, who had already been working in the museum for 17 years when he took over from Brendan Ó Ríordáin in 1988. Things have changed dramatically under Wallace's watch, with the opening of the Museum of Decorative Arts and History at Collins Barracks in 1997 and the Museum of Country Life in Castlebar in 2001, as well as the recent establishment of the National Museum's own series of academic publications.

Not bad for two decades' work, but Wallace feels there is more to do before Ireland's National Museum can hold its head up beside its European counterparts.

"We're miles from it," he says simply, decrying a lack of investment in the people resources needed to run a world-class museum. "Even Wales has a bigger staff in its National Museum than we have."

The distance our national institution still has to travel was illustrated graphically in a report from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), published this year, which highlighted "significant shortcomings" in the museum's capacity to keep track of its collections, as well as poor storage facilities which are putting national collections "at risk of damage and decay". The report cut deep.

"I took it personally because I'd given my life and soul to the place, and so had a lot of my colleagues here," Wallace admits.

At the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee hearing last month, which followed the CAG report's release, his defence was spirited. "We have been grossly neglected until the eleventh hour," he told the committee.

Wallace speaks frankly, both to Government representatives and reporters.

"I was able to speak my mind in front of elected members of the Dáil," he says, not without some pride. "It was the first time I've been in that position, so I took my chance."

For Wallace, it was a chance to set the record straight. "We've been blackguarded since 1922," he explains, though he is clear that he doesn't blame politicians. "The museum has been hated by the Civil Service, not by Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael."

According to its director, the museum has been playing catch-up ever since the foundation of the State, especially given its legal obligation to take in all archaeological artefacts from excavations throughout the State. With such a considerable and constant intake, space is a central issue, one which Wallace says he has long been clamouring to address.

Until the report raised the right eyebrows, there was "nowhere to put stuff," says Wallace, but its publication helped put pressure on the Office of Public Works (OPW) to remedy this situation. Negotiations are currently nearing completion on a new location for many of the artefacts currently not on display, including archaeological finds and the kinds of animal and insect specimens that fall under the remit of the Natural History Museum.

"If there's an eel or a frog or a particular kind of animal in Ireland, the actual animal which gives that its definition is kept in the National Museum," Wallace says. "That eel might have been caught in Co Mayo in the 1770s and we still have that in a tub." He leans forward in an attempt to communicate an enthusiasm about our historical heritage that 37 years in the National Museum hasn't curbed. "There are fish in that tank that saw Parnell!"

As well as a new storage facility, the museum has been granted additional staff to catch up on cataloguing artefacts accumulated over the years since it was officially founded in 1877. Yet though both the report's key concerns are being addressed, there are still questions over the future of an institution that Wallace feels requires extensive development to do justice to its collections, including a geology collection which was on display until an annexe of the Natural History Museum was removed to make space for the Dáil bar and restaurant.

"The dream with the Natural History building is that we would dig an underground area under the little park in front of it, and we would put [our] geology [collection] into that," he says.

What's missing is about €12 million to see that project through, money which Wallace understands is unlikely to come from the State while the current economic climate prevails.

WHAT HAS BEEN secured is money for a new annexe at the Natural History Museum and for further development at the Museum of Decorative Arts and History at Collins Barracks, where there are plans to build an atrium which will link all areas of the site together and house a number of new exhibitions, including one covering Irish history "from Sarsfield to Bertie Ahern". Wallace also hopes to see conservation work begin on the Kildare Street building, which currently houses the Museum of Archaeology, once restoration work on the Natural History Museum is completed. Yet after so long on the job, he is aware that he may not even see this latter building reopened during his time as director.

"Officially, yes, it'll happen within four years," he says. "From bitter experience from dealing with the State, I know that it could be longer."

Wallace is clearly weary from two decades of what he sees as daily battles. "[There are] battles with finance, with the OPW, every day, with our own department, and you'd be surprised at the insults and the diminishments, how you are demeaned as if you were responsible, as if I owned the Ardagh Chalice!" He is emphatic. "I don't. The people of Ireland do."

Wallace holds fast to the sentiment that the museum and all its contents belong to the entire country.

"Museums in general in Ireland are bedevilled by a sense of elitism," he says. "My whole career has been dedicated to changing that. Of all my belief systems I hold strongest that the museum belongs to everyone."

It's a career that began as an archaeologist, with the "lucky break" coming in 1974 when he was put in charge of excavations at Wood Quay.

"That's the most important thing I've ever done in my life," he says. "It was a sacred, sacred duty."

It was his experience at Wood Quay that led Wallace to speak out over the controversial developments currently taking place in the Tara valley.

"I'd love to say a lot more, but I can't because I'm in a State position," he says. "I've gone as far as anybody could. If my predecessors had said about Wood Quay what I've said about Tara, Wood Quay wouldn't have been a crisis. It was that they took it lying down and shut up about it."

Wallace is determined not to be so passive about the proposed developments in Tara, and is categorical in his opinions. "I think that the Tara decision is not a good one," he says.

Having formed part of an expert group set up by the Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, to advise on the area, he says his concern is that the building of the roads is only the beginning of a much larger development alongside them. "It will wreck Ireland if that's allowed go ahead," he says.

It's clear that Wallace is not about to sit out the last five years of his tenure quietly. "I suppose I'm too long in the job," he admits.

His plan is to retire fully at 65 from a position that even he admits is "a young person's job." This may be the case, but Wallace also contends that it is his age that allows him to speak out. "I'm 60 this year," he says. "So I've nothing to lose."

As the director of the National Museum celebrates two decades in the job, he can at least be confident that the issues outlined in the CAG report will not be his only legacy.

"They discovered a new insect, a small little thing, in Sumatra, and they called it after me," he says with evident glee. What kind of insect? "It's a non-biting midge."