Ali Hewson, patron of the Chernobyl Children's Trust:

"I think it is time we brought Irish children into the 21st century. Children are the way forward and we have to stimulate and educate them. This museum will make learning exciting, and also has great potential for handicapped children.

"I brought my children to the Children's Museum in New York. We all had a wonderful time. They did recycling, dentistry, built houses, watched people acting out Dr Seuss. Everything came out of the realm of theory and into our hands. What I'd really like to see in an Irish Children's Museum would be what they have in Boston: an area for school groups to do scientific experiments."

Pat Donlon (Committee Chair), former director of the National Library, now working on a history of children's literature in Ireland:

"This is a great idea. What do you do with your children on a wet Saturday afternoon? This past summer must have been agony for parents. And now we're in the middle of a baby boom. Plus we're on the crest of an economic wave. Once you have a product that is innovative and educational as well as self-sustaining, you're more than half way there.

"I think various government departments should get involved. The Department of Tourism, because it's a tourist attraction, the Department of Education, because it's educational, and so on. The local community could help too, like in the Boston Children's Museum, where there is a mini-supermarket which is sponsored by a local supermarket."

Eamonn Gilmore, TD (DL) for Dun Laoghaire:

"It will be successful because there is a demand for this sort of interactive facility. Of course it will be expensive to construct, but if someone proposed building the National Museum today, would you do it at all? "This project is of value and is worthwhile. It is as entitled to State support as some of the larger sporting facilities and hotels which benefited from the last EU-funded tourism programme. If funding can be provided to grant aid a leisure centre attached to a hotel, shouldn't this qualify too? Surely children and their parents are as important as the corporate sector and its executives?