A new committee has been established to support museums and galleries to develop methodologies to examine the ownership history of collections.

Yesterday, the Minister for Tourism and Culture, Catherine Martin, announced the establishment of a new expert committee to advise the Government on issues relating to the restitution and repatriation of culturally sensitive objects in Ireland.

The Heritage Council will serve as the oversight body for the advisory committee.

On Newstalk Breakfast, The Heritage Council CEO, Virginia Teehan said the committee will advise "public and private institutions" who have items in their collections "about which we need to find out some more."

"I don't think it would be accurate to say at this stage that the Irish museums and galleries and archives have extensive collections of objects, which may need to be returned to their point of origin," she said.

"The point of this new expert committee is to establish a policy framework and a set of guidelines to support those who have the responsibility for the care of collections – be they big or small – in dealing with difficult issues which are emerging in recent times."

International issues

Ms Teehan said this is not an issue of "kicking sleeping dogs" but rather, a way to tackle an "international issue."

"There have been issues internationally for over 20 years, if not longer, around how cultural objects move globally," she said.

"We don't have that [colonial] past.

"We have had an engagement with countries in other ways through people who maybe have worked internationally and sent objects back to Ireland and people who travelled internationally and maybe purchased objects, which may be culturally sensitive today."

A member of the public walks past Renoir's 'Les Parapluies' (the umbrellas) at Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane Gallery, at the photocall to publicise the refurbished gallery and it's acquisition of eight major Impressionist paintings worth over 180 million euro.

The purpose of this committee is not to create lists of items that need to be returned back to places, according to Ms Teehan.

"It's to support the museum and the gallery world in developing methodologies to examine the ownership history of the collections, and to put in place appropriate procedures and policies should decisions be made about what needs to be kept or whether or not an international dialogue can take place," she said.

"This allows the facilitation of international discussions around where objects are at this place in time. It's not as cut and dried as it may appear."

Cataloguing

Ms Teehan said part of the work of the committee is teaching collectors to catalogue the collections in their care.

"[Collectors will] adhere to international standards and publish that information, probably online, to make it available to the international community," she said.

"This is a growing area of work amongst the museum profession internationally.

"We are seeking to support that professional standard in Ireland.

"There are changes in the values about how people view what is kept in museum collections.

"By and large, museum collections make the most sense in their context, where they're from, and identifying that context and understanding it is important for the people of that place."

You can listen back here: