Leinster rugby player Andrew Portern with Ailís O’Carroll, head of the scientific community at Explorium, at that centre's reopening in 2024. Photograph: Marc O'SullivanLocating the planned €70 million National Children’s Science Centre (NCSC) in Dublin city centre “doesn’t make any sense”, according to the managing director of Explorium, an existing privately-owned science centre. Charlie Kelly also claimed it would be a “crazy use of public funds” to build the NCSC at the planned location at Earlsfort Terrace when there is another science centre 10km away. Its chairman, John Conlan, told TDs the organisation had no funding to pay for the science centre. At the PAC meeting, ICLM’s chief executive Barbara Galavan outlined plans for the Earlsfort Terrace site to have three floors of interactive exhibits, a planetarium and labs.

Source: The Irish Times February 14, 2026 13:33 UTC