Locating the planned €70 million National Children’s Science Centre (NCSC) in Dublin city centre “doesn’t make any sense”, according to the managing director of Explorium, an existing privately-owned science centre.
Charlie Kelly also claimed it would be a “crazy use of public funds” to build the NCSC at the planned location at Earlsfort Terrace when there is another science centre 10km away.
He said an offer to potentially use Explorium’s Sandyford facility as the location for the new NCSC remained on the table, suggesting there could be a public-private partnership. “We’re open to exploring all avenues,” he said.
His comments come after Thursday’s Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) had heard from representatives of Irish Children’s Museum Limited (ICML), the charity behind the long-standing plans to deliver the NCSC.
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Officials from the Office of Public Works (OPW) – which is under a legal obligation to deliver a building for the NCSC project – also appeared before the Dáil’s spending watchdog on Thursday.
Its chairman, John Conlan, told TDs the organisation had no funding to pay for the science centre. The PAC heard that no Government department has been willing to become a sponsor for developing the project, which has been under consideration for more than 20 years.
There was an agreement in 2003 that the OPW would deliver a children’s science museum but the original version of the plan was scuppered by the 2008 economic crash.
The OPW still had a legal obligation to deliver the centre and under a new agreement in 2013 it was agreed to build a facility adjoining the National Concert Hall (NCH) on Earlsfort Terrace.
Following later arbitration proceedings brought by ICML, the OPW was required to apply for planning permission and to proceed with the construction.
The PAC has previously been told that by 2024 the cost to be borne by the State stood at an estimated €70.4 million.
The Comptroller and Auditor General published a report on the NCSC plans last year. It referenced how Explorium had been operating in Sandyford since 2018 and said this “may limit the demand for another similar attraction in Dublin”.
Explorium’s managing director Charlie Kelly argued that the city-centre location for the NCSC did not make sense, questioning where buses for school tours would park. He said Explorium was “on the edge of the M50” with space for parking buses. “So I think we’d be a much more preferable solution.”
Kelly argued that Explorium was “already delivering the core objectives that the proposed national science centre is intended to achieve” and a “collaborative approach” to delivering the centre represented “the fastest, most cost-effective and lowest-risk route” to achieving this.
He called on the Government to identify “a lead department to co-ordinate all stakeholders”.
At the PAC meeting, ICLM’s chief executive Barbara Galavan outlined plans for the Earlsfort Terrace site to have three floors of interactive exhibits, a planetarium and labs.
She said ICML has “committed to raising €25 million for the fit-out of the science centre, which will be gifted to the State for the benefit of children.”
Galavan said she had met Explorium but “we are not really in a position to be able to have a meaningful conversation with Explorium because our commitment is to the Government”.
She also highlighted how the OPW has said €40 million has to be invested in the part of the NCH building earmarked for the NCSC “regardless of its end use”.
Luke O’Neill, an ICML board member, said: “We think the Earlsfort Terrace site is ideal.” adding: He added: “It is in the city centre” and beside the NCH, so “Ireland could have a niche with the arts-science interface”.
In a submission to the PAC, ICML requested that the committee recommend to the Government that a sponsoring department be appointed so that work on the NCSC “can get under way”.
