City Museum should be open every day to meet demand

By Dara Bradley

The city’s museum is in desperate need or reorganisation, a City Councillor said this week and should be open on Sundays and Mondays.

Councillor Ollie Crowe said that the Galway City Museum is not being fully utilised and called its closure on Sundays and Mondays “unacceptable”.

“The Galway City Museum is the most visited attraction in Galway City, for it to be closed two days of the week is a situation that cannot be tolerated. The Food Festival was a fantastic success over the weekend and attracted thousands of visitors to our city, sadly many of these did not have the option of visiting the museum,” said Cllr Crowe.

Galway City Museum attracted over 160,000 visitors last year and Cllr Crowe said that while this was a good achievement, it was also a “reflection of the untapped potential that is going to waste”.

“Sunday is the second busiest day of the week in terms of visiting tourists, were the Museum operating on a seven day basis, the figures would go up to well beyond 200,000,” he said.

The Fianna Fáil Councillor added: “Tourism is more important than ever to our economy, both locally and nationally. It is a sector we do well in but we cannot take that for granted. The notion of tourists arriving on Saturday evening and leaving on Tuesday morning telling their friends and colleagues that they had been unable to visit the main attraction of the city is a not a scenario we can afford to continue”.

Cllr Crowe was particularly angry about the failure to fill the position of Museum Director, which has been vacant for almost two years. “I wouldn’t tend to be especially critical of the public service but the reality is there is no way such a senior and important position would be vacant for so long in the private sector.”

Cllr Crowe said he was calling on the Government Dáil Deputies of Galway West to seek exceptions from the current moratorium in place to allow the hiring of some additional staff for the museum which would ensure it could open seven days.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.