It reads like a list of the usual suspects from the Irish art canon: George Barret, James Barry, Nathaniel Hone, William Orpen, Walter Osborne, Roderic O'Conor, John Lavery (right), Paul Henry, Jack B Yeats and William Scott, to name but a few.

On the whole, however, this exhibition strikes me as somewhat lazy. The Ulster Museum is closed for refurbishment until 2009, so the show is presumably a positive alternative to putting the works into storage.

But isn't it also just an easy option for the National Gallery, a nice filler for its exhibition programme?

It is not being described as such by the National Gallery, of course. Quite the opposite, in fact.

'Treasures from the North' is being proclaimed as a momentous occasion, "a unique opportunityf to view within the same building possibly the finest presentation of Irish paintings ever assembled", according to gallery director Raymond Keaveney.

It has also been hailed as an important exercise in cross-border cooperation, one that, in the words of arts minister John O'Donoghue, "shows the possibilities that exist for institutions on the island of Ireland to work together".

Worthy sentiments aside, however, you begin to wonder if there is more to it than that. If it is intended to be the finest presentation of Irish paintings ever assembled in one building, why was there no attempt to hang paintings from the National Gallery's collection alongside those of the Ulster Museum's?

Surely it would have been interesting, for example, to see Lavery's imposing 'Daylight Raid from my Studio Window, 7th July 1917' alongside his largescale masterpiece 'The Artist's Studio'? Surely it is not good enough simply to advertise the Ulster Museum's (admittedly impressive) Irish art collection?

But the most crucial issue at stake is the use of the Millennium Wing for this exhibition. Has the National Gallery perhaps forgotten what it intended to use the 33m extension for?

The inaugural Millennium Wing exhibition . . . a travelling Impressionism show from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston . . . was immensely popular, with more than 120,000 visitors. At the time, Keaveney said it represented "a new beginning for the gallery's presentation of international exhibitions". Likewise, the then chairwoman of the gallery board, Carmel Naughton, said the new wing "would provide the public with an opportunity to enjoy high-calibre international travelling exhibitions".

If one of the main functions of the Millennium Wing is to house such international travelling exhibitions, the gallery seems to be increasingly shying away from this. The present exhibition, inevitably, has a certain parochialism to it. And it is not as if 'Treasures from the North' is just one show in a wide variety of Millennium Wing exhibitions . . . it is the first in the 2007 programme and it continues for a lengthy six-month period, running throughout the entire summer tourist season.

If art lovers want to see exhibitions of truly international calibre, they still have to travel abroad.

We should expect more from our National Gallery.