The director of the National Gallery of Ireland is hopeful funding can be generated to add a new wing to the complex.
Raymond Keaveney said the development had been designed and would be constructed to the right of the gallery's facade on Merrion Square in Dublin if the required money could be raised.
Speaking following the launch of the gallery's redeveloped website by Minister for Culture Mary Hanafin, Mr Keaveney said the new wing would be on scale with the rest of the complex and would house the National Gallery's conservation and education sections, as well as its library.
He said the intention was that the wing could be developed in a cost neutral way. "If we do it properly over four or five years we believe we will get support," Mr Keaveney said. A spokeswoman for the National Gallery said work on a new wing was unlikely to commence before 2014.
Work is due to begin in January on a €30 million refurbishment of the gallery's Milltown and Dargan wings, which were built in 1903 and 1864 respectively. The project is being funded by the Office of Public Works, Department of Cultrue and the National Gallery. It should be completed in 2014.
When the refurbishment project begins there will be limited access to the Dargan and Milltown wings of the gallery, but the gallery's website will provide virtual access and up to date information on its collections.
Visitors to the site can access hundreds of images of works in the collection, as well as information on the featured artists and access to the library catalogue and archive collections.
Ms Hanafin said the website would serve as a "great invitation" to the National Gallery that would open it up to both national and international audience.
Regarding the proposed new wing, Mr Keaveney said the gallery had experience of raising funds in difficult times and that its Millennium wing had been achieved "in the teeth of an economic blizzard" in the late 1980s.
"In principle there was no direct Government funding required, and we delivered on our promise," he said.
"We absolutely believe that we can do the same again through a range of revenue generating, funding and other ways of doing it. You don't look to a single source and you don't look to a single geographic area either."
Mr Keaveney said the gallery had been "massaging interest" in the project overseas and that he hoped it could be carried out at no net cost to the Government.
Ms Hanafin said she was pleased the planned refurbishment project was going ahead and that hopefully there would be more money for capital expenditure when the public finances had stabilised. "I don't know who will be in this position in 2014, but I would have thought [the National Gallery] is an investment you would want to keep going."
