Brendon Kelson, who ran the memorial in the early 1990s, said he was baffled that the current director, Steve Gower, used a memorial anniversary oration to criticise him, more than 15 years after he had retired.

In a Remembrance Day speech on November 11, Mr Gower said Mr Kelson ''could hardly be said to have been a raging success''.

''As the director, budget control and financial discipline would seem to have been difficult concepts for him.''

Mr Kelson became aware of the remarks when the memorial posted the speech online. He said the comments had hurt him. ''[They] are totally unfair, wrong, ill-founded and he deserves censure.''

He was shocked that a director would make comments about his predecessor's abilities on Remembrance Day.

''If he had concerns about me, I thought he might have expressed them directly to me. In point of fact, through the whole of his tenure of office there, I've done nothing other than to support him, and the War Memorial, publicly and privately.''

Mr Gower was unrepentant, saying his reference to Mr Kelson was fleeting.

Mr Kelson said assertions made in the speech were incorrect, particularly that the memorial was in deficit when Mr Gower took over.

''In all the time that I and [deputy director] Michael McKernan were running the memorial, there was never an overrun on budget. We were always in budget, we always had satisfactory results from the Department of Finance … so that is outright wrong.''

The memorial had always been forced to operate in straitened circumstances.

''The memorial's finances were only parlous in the sense that we never had enough money. [Gower] is using that to say we overspent our budget. Well, we never did.''