Museum staffers in Ireland are finding it increasingly difficult to sustain a career in the field over unstable contracts, low pay and toxic working environments, according to Dr. Emma McAlister, who wrote a blog post on the issue for the International Council of Museums on Monday.
As McAlister recounted, she has only been able to work in the Irish museum industry over the last two and a half years through a temporary rolling contract that, at times, would be renewed just one day before its expiration. Her experience isn’t isolated.
A 2024 compensation study from the lobby group Irish Museums Association found there was an overreliance on temporary contracts and volunteers in the country’s museums. Around 52 percent of museum workers were on permanent or rolling contracts with volunteers making up their second largest pool, standing at 27 percent, IMA said in the report. Only 6 percent of workers were on fixed-term contracts for up to five years. The transition from short-term contracts to permanent positions is a fundamental issue Ireland’s museums need to address, the IMA concluded in its report.
Temporary contracts add to instability, McAlister wrote, and create a culture of silence around employee mistreatment and toxic hierarchies. Ireland’s museums in particular have a reputation for unhealthy working cultures, she wrote. For instance, one in five workers were “often” bullied at the National Museum of Ireland, according to a previous Irish Times report.
Due to the prestigious nature of these cultural institutions, there’s an “expectation of gratitude” despite low pay and toxic hierarchies. This is not just limited to museums in Ireland. In the UK, 16 percent of staffers working in cultural activities were paid below living wage in 2024, according to the Museums Association, a UK-based membership organization for museum, gallery and heritage professionals and organizations.
One underlying issue that results in museum staffers being underpaid with fragile job security lies in the underfunding of the museum sector. But some governments have pledged recent investments into established and local museums as a means to boost the sector.
On Friday, Ireland’s Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, Patrick O’Donovan earmarked €274,000 ($316,000) for local and regional museums in the country. Meanwhile, Northern Ireland’s Ulster Folk Museum also received £40 million ($54 million) in government funding.
Ireland’s funding boost follows the UK’s £1.5 billion pledge over a five-year time period, £600 million of which will be pledged to Department-funded museums, such as the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, while £160 million has been pledged for regional and local institutions.
While further government funding is a positive signal the museum sector could be moving in the right direction, it isn’t yet clear how the new budgets will be used by individual museums, and if some of the new funds will be directed toward staff retention.
Fundamentally, the Irish museum sector needs to “face a long-overdue reckoning” with help from governments and funding bodies, McAlister said.
