The board of the Hunt Museum in Limerick will meet tomorrow to discuss allegations by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre that some of its collection may have been looted by the Nazis.
The museum director, Ms Virginia Teehon, said it had not made any contact with the Wiesenthal organisation, and added that the museum had yet to receive a copy of its letter to the President, Mrs McAleese.
The letter is being sent to the museum by the Minister for Arts, Mr O'Donoghue, who has asked the board to examine the organisation's demand for an independent inquiry into the collection.
"We will be making a decision on how to progress this with all the relevant agencies," Ms Teehon said of the meeting.
The board is likely to engage an archivist qualified by the Professional Association of Archivists to prepare a "descriptive list" of the museum's archive. Such a list would set out in detail all of the information available about the provenance of every item in the collection.
Asked whether she was satisfied that the museum had possession of the entire archive of the museum collection, she said: "What I understand to be in the museum would be the extant archives which relate to the objects in the museum. I understand that at this point."
The meeting tomorrow takes place against the backdrop of claims by the Wiesenthal Centre that the couple who amassed the collection - the late Mr John Hunt and his late wife Gertrude - had "intimate business relationships with notorious dealers in art looted by the Nazis".
The adoptive children of the Hunts - Mr John Hunt jnr and Ms Trudi Hunt - have said the allegations about Nazi links are without foundation. The allegations are also denied by the museum's chairman, Mr George Stacpoole.
