At the end of a special month which saw the Little Museum of Dublin win a European award for cultural heritage, founder-director Trevor White has said that Dublin residents need to have a warmer relationship with the rest of the country, and vice versa.
White was a guest on The Business on RTÉ Radio 1 on Saturday, during which he was asked by host Richard Curran about the "mixed relationship" that many people who live in Dublin but grew up elsewhere have with the city.
"It's arguable Dublin has a dysfunctional relationship not simply with itself, but also with the rest of the country," White replied.
"There's some people who can't get over the river - the Northside-Southside thing - and I just think that's sad, frankly. And there's some people who won't forgive Dublin for being, whatever, 'the centre of colonial occupation'. They still regard Dublin as this sort of place apart. I just think that's very sad."
However, White said he was not blaming anybody in particular for the situation.
"In fact, there's probably enough blame to go around," he continued. "I think Dubliners, we probably need to have a bit more empathy towards the rest of the country, but I also think it's important for people outside Dublin to acknowledge that it's actually unhelpful to constantly knock the capital."
"We have to be honest about this: without a strong, dynamic capital the rest of this country is banjaxed," he stressed. "The Dublin economy is just too important in the context of Ireland."
Located on St Stephen's Green, and telling the story of the capital city with a collection created from public donations, the museum includes permanent exhibitions on the visit of Queen Victoria to Dublin in 1900, the personal collection of popular Dublin Lord Mayor Alfie Byrne, and a room dedicated to the global success of U2.
The museum includes a permanent U2 exhibition
In early April it won the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage, the Europa Nostra Award - considered to be Europe's highest honour in the heritage field. The museum won in the category of Education, Training and Awareness-Raising. It is this year's only Irish winner and is now part of a Europe-wide online competition for a Public Choice award, with voting open at: vote.europanostra.org.
"It's a great city, really," White said of his hometown. "One of the joys of working in the museum is that you see people from all over the country; they come in and they walk out and they're that little bit prouder of Dublin."
The museum, which launched in 2011, had 25,000 visitors in its first year. In 2015 there were 102,000, and a cap has now been placed on visitor numbers.
"We have a problem now in that the visitor numbers are too big," White admitted. "But we also have an opportunity to double the size of the museum in the next couple of years with our patrons, Dublin City Council and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.
"Our goal, really, is to create a full-scale, world class museum of Dublin on the site. That will include a dedicated education centre for kids, universal access - which is very important to us - and then double the exhibition space that we have today."
Listen to the full interview on The Business here.
