Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
NORTHERN IRELAND
DEPARTMENT OF
CULTURE, ARTS
AND LEISURE
2 NOVEMBER 2004
Q80 Mr Jenkins: I am going to come
to the end now because I do not think it is worth pursuing. You
started off by saying that hindsight is a marvellous thing. I
expect if I went and grabbed somebody in off the street and said,
"Sit there and give evidence regarding this" they would
say, "Oh, I will do that". Hindsight is a marvellous
thing. We employ people, they get the best consultants in the
business, they have the best financial brains around them and
they come to a conclusion and that is why we pay them, not for
hindsight but to have foresight. When we have these things and
you say "Hindsight is a marvellous thing" it is an admission
that you were not up to the job in the first place, to be honest,
and that is why I get really angry about the fact that people
who get well paid to do a job say "I could not do the job"
and they carry on doing it. How many other visitor attractions
under your Department's remit are in this mess or running down
this road of not being viable and we are still going to prop up
until the end without knowing the full financial implications?
Have you done a survey of every visitor attraction?
Dr McGinley: Yes, Chairman, there
was a survey done as part of the local Museum and Heritage Review
that looked at over 400 facilities in Northern Ireland. The facilities
that we are responsible for in DCAL are the national museums and
galleries of Northern Ireland which comprise four sites: the Ulster
American Folk Park, the Ulster Museum, the Armagh County Museum
and the Folk and Transport Museum. These are recognised as requiring
continuing public subsidy, indeed your report in June on the museums
and galleries shows that there is a recognition that if something
is of national interest it is never going to be viable. What we
try and do is be as efficient as possible and try to be more entrepreneurial
in terms of the management of that estate. There is a major review
of our museums and galleries underway as we speak.
Q81 Mr Curry: I have visited Navan,
I am delighted to say I got there before there was a visitor centre.
I am looking at your figures, on page 35, this comparison with
the Giant's Causeway, which I visited, the Ulster American Folk
Park—no power on earth would get me anywhere with the word
folk in the title—and I have been to Navan but not the Centre.
I cannot understand why anybody thought these made proper comparators.
The Giant's Causeway is a geological formation which is world
famous, which exists and which does receive large numbers of visitors.
It is probably one of the great geological formations in Ireland
which is known. That increased its numbers from 120,000 to 300,000
over a period of eight years and the visitor centre clearly seems
to have made a difference. The Ulster American Folk Park I take
it was created from nothing?
Dr McGinley: It was an independent
trust.
Q82 Mr Curry: There was nothing on
the ground before it started?
Dr McGinley: No.
Q83 Mr Curry: That started from 1978
to 1987 which is, after all, a period of nine years. It has not
even doubled its numbers. It may well have been very successful
but it has only gone from 48,000 to just under 82,000 so why should
anybody assume that a site which really consists of a number of
basically grassed earthworks should move from 30,000 to 160,000
in seven years? Did nobody at the beginning say "Hello, hello,
hello, I just do not believe this"?
Dr McGinley: The original concept
as I mentioned earlier was for a 300 acre archaeological park
because this is a site which is very rich in archaeological history.
As I mentioned, it was a candidate for World Heritage status in
its own right. However it is one of four sites on the island of
Ireland that constitutes the seat of royalty dating back to 700
BC.
Q84 Mr Curry: This may give us one
of the hints, you see, I think, too much national pride was engaged
in this site as the seat of the Kings of Ulster. You should have
noticed, of course, the temple was burnt down deliberately a few
years after it was built, so that was a bad omen, was it not,
really?
Dr McGinley: It is apparently
sacrificial, Chairman.
Q85 Mr Curry: How much was the admission
charge?
Dr McGinley: The admission charge,
Chairman, I do not have that information with me I am afraid.[2]
Q86 Mr Curry: Do you charge to go to
the visitor centre at the Causeway?
Dr McGinley: No. There is a charge
for car parking that is lifted by the District Council. There
is about £100,000 lifted by the National Trust.
Q87 Mr Curry: The only charge at
the Giant's Causeway is a car parking charge?
Dr McGinley: Yes.
Q88 Mr Curry: Okay. The Ulster American
Folk Park?
Dr McGinley: Is a charging facility.
Q89 Mr Curry: How much do they charge
for that?
Dr McGinley: It is approximately
£4 to £5 per person for family tickets.
Q90 Mr Curry: You do not know how
much the charge was at Navan?
Dr McGinley: I do not, I can give
a note to the Committee on that, of the charges at the time.[3]
From memory, Chairman, they were in the region of £3 to £4
per head.
Q91 Mr Curry: The key seems to me to
be on the next page, 36 and 37, where one of your eponymous consultants
here made the point that nobody had heard of Navan basically.
It was not a famous thing waiting to be exploited. The consciousness
of it was very low indeed. ". . . awareness of Navan Fort
is low even with prompting . . . a more direct advertising approach
seems to be needed . . . the incidence of visiting is low and
the likelihood of paying further visits is also weak.". Yet
again, the assumption that this could be built up into a big international
venue seems to me to have been massively optimistic at the time.
Your visitor number predictions go up in quite suspiciously round
numbers of five. Where the consultants had got this from, I cannot
help but feel it was approximate.
Dr McGinley: Chairman, I think
what they did was set the mark in terms of the Giant's Causeway.
This is really my own review of the papers where you can see the
reasonableness of what they were comparing with because there
was very little in Northern Ireland to make comparisons with.
They looked at other sites such as Newgrange in the Republic of
Ireland and also looked at, for example, the Yorvik Viking Centre
in York so there was a comparative analysis taken across the board
at the time.
Q92 Mr Curry: They could have looked
at the Armouries in Leeds, could they not? That catastrophically
fails to meet its target. That was a collection which existed,
it was removed up to Leeds—a city of which I am very fond,
my constituency is very close to Leeds—but it has never
ever met anywhere near its prediction of visitor numbers. All
the precedents for this should have led you to look at it with
the most jaundiced eye you could possibly turn on it.
Dr McGinley: Possibly, Chairman.
Q93 Mr Curry: If you look, again,
I am sorry to come back to this funding stream, it does give me
the impression that you felt it had to be kept alive but not really
kicking. It just about was enough to keep a discernible heartbeat
there but nothing much else, is that right? Nobody could really
bring themselves to say it never was going to start from the beginning
and the sooner we give it a merciful release the better.
Dr McGinley: Chairman, I think
when Government was approached they did bring in expertise to
advise on the best way forward. The Navan board also took steps
to minimise. For example, one area where there was considerable
success was the education programme was considered to be of a
high calibre and even where that was performing poorly in latter
years there were still 60 school children a day going into the
centre in a 190 school day year. It was an example of where there
was good targeted marketing, they were able to realise the figures.
Q94 Mr Curry: The bridging finance,
what was on the two sides of the bridge?
Dr McGinley: The Fort and the
Centre.
Q95 Mr Curry: No, no, I mean the
finance. What was on the two sides of the finance? What was the
bridging finance bridging to?
Dr McGinley: It was bridging,
we had hoped, towards viability.
Q96 Mr Curry: Hang on, viability
is a lovely word, give me some money. What do you mean in terms
of viability? Who was going to do what to achieve this viability?
Dr McGinley: That the Centre would
start to break even, that income levels would grow to a sufficient
level to sustain and develop.
Q97 Mr Curry: So basically a wing
and a prayer. Page 20, again the stream of capital and revenue
grants received. There is a wonderful asterisk down here, it says
"The sources of these amounts cannot be identified".
It is slightly curious, is it not, really?
Dr McGinley: Chairman, you are
referring to the figure—I have a different page.
Q98 Mr Curry: Page 20, figure one,
we have got the European Regional Development Fund which has been
taken for a terrible ride on this.
Dr McGinley: Yes.
Q99 Mr Curry: So, presumably, have
the Government which has pitched in the International Fund for
Ireland. We have got these slightly curious things, "capital
unallocated" and "revenue unallocated", asterisk,
"the sources of these amounts cannot be identified".
That is a lot of money to suddenly appear from thin air, is it
not? I wish I could find some money unidentified like that.
Dr McGinley: I would agree entirely
with the Northern Ireland Audit Office's note there that it was
disproportionately difficult because of the multiplicity of funding
streams but I have written to the Committee—
Chairman: We have seen that.
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