An expert group is examining alternative sites for the National Concert Hall and is completing its draft report. the Minister for Arts, Ms de Valera, told the House.

"The National Concert Hall does not have the further backstage facilities and second auditorium it requires, and it is difficult to envisage how those facilities could be accommodated on the existing site," she said.

She was replying to a question from Mr Proinsias De Rossa (Labour, Dublin North West) who asked what consideration was being given by her Department to a proposal to relocate the NCH to a new site on Infirmary Road near the Phoenix Park in Dublin.

The secretary-general of her Department and his counterpart in the Department of Education and Science, along with the chairman of the Office of Public Works, had been authorised to form a "high level group" to examine and report on all the issues in relation to the NCH at Earlsfort Terrace.

One of the options under review, the Minister confirmed, was the relocation of the concert hall to a State-owned site at Infirmary Road. "We will have to consider whether that site would be sufficient for the expansion of the NCH to include a second auditorium and onstage facilities, but all of this is very much in the melting pot," she said.

Since its establishment the NCH had developed as a venue for many forms of musical performance and had to meet increasingly stringent health and safety regulations. "The inadequacies inherent in the original location are now a serious constraint on its operations."

Most notably, it lacked a self-contained auditorium for musical performances of a "more intimate" nature.