( cxlviii ) 



Wishment of a Museum of Irish Antiquities, and otherwise. It has 

 both before and since the Union, been aided by grants of Public 

 money, especially since a Select Committee of your Honourable House- 

 reported favourably upon it in 1864. 



2. Your Honourable House was pleased, dming the present session, 

 to vote a sum of £2000, in aid of the said Eoyal Irish Academy, to be 

 accounted for by the Chief Secretary, Ireland, who has, accordingly, 

 already accounted with your Petitioners for £500, portion of said vote^ 



3. In the month of February last a communication, bearing date 

 the 9th of that month, was received from the Right Honourable Lord 

 Sandon, Vice-President of the Committee on Education of Her 

 Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, announcing to the Academy 

 that Her Majesty's Government had approved of a scheme framed by 

 that Committee, including a proposal for the transfer of the Anti- 

 quarian Collections known as the Academy's Museum to a Science 

 and Art Museum in Dublin to be provided by the State, under a 

 Director who should be an Officer of the branch of that Committee 

 known as the Science and Art Department, and who would act as. 

 Accounting Officer for all the Votes of Public Money, and be the 

 medium of communication with the said Department. 



4. Your Petitioners, considering that their collections do not con- 

 stitute an Industrial or Art Museum within the objects of the Com- 

 mission of 1869, hereinafter referred to, and that the Science and Art 

 Department is a branch of the Committee of Her Majesty's Privy 

 Council on Education, whereas the Poyal Irish Academy is not an. 

 Educational Institution, but a learned body entitled, as it conceives,, 

 to the same status with the other learned Societies of the United 

 Kingdom, which have not been, in this or any other manner, subor- 

 dinated to the Science and Art Department, in consenting so to- 

 transfer its collections, stipulated, amongst other conditions, that the 

 Academy should be accountable, as at present, to Her Majesty's 

 Treasury, through the Irish Government, for all sums voted by Par- 

 liament, and should not be subject, in the conduct of its aifairs, or the 

 expenditure of its grants, to any control on the part of the Science and 

 Art Department, or any of its Officers. 



5. Your Petitioners' answer, bearing date the 7th of March, 1876, 

 embodying such stipulation has received no further reply than an 

 official acknowledgment of its receipt. But on the 1 8th of May last^ • 



