THE NATIONAL GALLERY is hardly worth visiting these days, given the amount of the building that’s been closed in recent months for a renovation and extension programme, but the first significant phase of that €30m project has now been given the go-ahead by Dublin City Council.

The planner noted that the architects Heneghan Peng, who designed the proposed modifications, believe the link between the Millennium wing and the older part of the building “does not work in its current state”, even though it “is critical to movement across the gallery complex”. That’s clearly true, given the design statement says people get lost, but surely that should have been addressed when the €33m Millennium wing was being designed and constructed?

Revisiting the scene less than a decade after the opening of the new wing suggests a lack of joined up thinking when that project was conceived, albeit the Millennium wing itself, which was designed by Benson + Forsyth, has been an obvious success.