On the Town: Museums showcase realms of memory, said the President, Mrs McAleese, when she presented this year's Museum of the Year awards.
"We are a history-making species," she added. Museums are the custodians of memory and unless we understand our predecessors we can only poorly understand ourselves, she said. Museums are "the vital guardians of that shared past".
"These awards are for the work and the imagination, the skill and the passion and the service you provide," she said at the ceremony in the House of Lords in Bank of Ireland on Dublin's College Green. The Hunt Museum was awarded the 2003 Museum of the Year Award.
Down County Museum and the Museum of Country Life in Mayo were joint winners in the best access and outreach award, while the National Gallery and the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Holywood, Co Down were both commended in this category.
Dublinia won the best publication award and Down County Museum was commended.
The Royal Fusiliers Museum in Armagh won the best exhibition award while the Irish Agriculture Museum in Wexford was commended for this category.
Virginia Teehan, director of the Hunt Museum in Limerick, which is housed in the old custom house on Rutland Street, said the collection attracts up to 30,000 visitors a year.
The collection of antiquities includes artefacts stretching from the neolithic age to the 20th century.
Other representatives at the awards ceremony included Brian Walsh, curator of the County Museum, Dundalk, which attracts approximately 20,000 annually, and Eamonn McEneaney, curator of the Waterford Treasures museum on the quayside, which was opened four years ago and attracts 26,000 annually.
"The museum sector is developing and expanding rapidly," said Michael Starrett, chief executive of the Heritage Council, which jointly administers the awards with the Northern Ireland Museums Council (NIMC).
Chris Bailey, director of the NIMC, highlighted the need to encourage the public to go and experience "the wonderful riches and treasures held in our museums".