Mr. Brian Donovan:

I would like to introduce my co-founder and fellow director at Eneclann, Ms Fiona Fitzsimons. I thank the committee for the invitation to appear before it today. In this short presentation, I will highlight key points from our 15 years of experience in genealogy in Ireland. The first question is what is the face of genealogy in Ireland and worldwide today? Second, given that genealogy has been transformed in the last 15 years, what can we learn from the State's role in this? Finally, as a company at the forefront of these changes, what do we recommend to propel progress?

Some committee members may already familiar with Eneclann but for the benefit of those who are not, Eneclann is a heritage company that develops digital resources for Irish family history as well as a range of complimentary services and products. The company was established in 1998 as a campus company at Trinity College Dublin and has won awards for its innovative business model. To date, Eneclann has published over 1,000 individual titles and over 70 million records online. It played a key role in the creation of the web service irishorigins.com, in 2003 and is a joint-venture partner inwww.findmypast.ie, launched in 2011. The company is well known for its high-profile genealogical research. This year, for example, we met Hollywood star Tom Cruise at Iveagh House to delivery his family history, stretching back over 1,000 years, a project we funded to support The Gathering initiative. We have worked with the popular television series, "Who do you think you are?" as well as home-produced features and are currently the anchor Irish researcher for NBC's "Faces of America" in the United States.

The company's highest-profile work was researching the ancestry of President Barack Obama. The company worked with Tourism Ireland and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to maximise the value of his visit to Ireland in 2011 and introduced Obama to his closest-living cousin in Ireland, a man called Dick Benn from Tipperary. This year, at the request of the White House, we gave Michelle Obama and her daughters a personal tour of their family history at Trinity College library.

Because of our expertise with historic records, Eneclann has been appointed by the State to tackle many landmark archival projects. We worked with the Department of Defence on a massive data disaster recovery of over 130,000 files. We worked on a project for the Department of Health involving a detailed listing of over 200,000 records relating to children in State care. We also undertook work for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, where we scheduled over 100,000 Land Commission files. Eneclann is also a trusted partner of many cultural institutions in Ireland and abroad including the National Archives of Ireland, Trinity College library, the UK National Archives, Family Search and many more.

What can we say about genealogy in the wider world in 2013? In the past 15 years we have had a digital revolution in Irish family history. There are now over 100 million Irish records online. These records are much more accessible than they have ever been before and are much easier to search. As a consequence, we have seen an exponential growth in the numbers of people tracing their Irish origins at home and abroad. The two engines behind this change are the internet and popular entertainment. Eneclann has been a technology pioneer in Irish genealogy, from publishing one of the first databases of material in 1999 to releasing the first complete edition of Griffith's Valuation online in 2003, a key resource, to our current position of having brought over 70 million Irish records to the public via the findmypast.ie website. Popular entertainment and major television programmes have also played a role. Genealogy is no longer perceived as a hobby for people with an aristocratic background. There is an understanding that every family has a story and that it is possible to trace almost every family back to the 1830s.

Genealogy is now a major worldwide hobby. What is the size of the global genealogy audience? Marketing surveys in the United States over the past 20 years have shown a dramatic rise in interest in genealogy, with recent figures showing that 73% of the adult population are interested, which equates to 173 million people. Of those interested, it is estimated that 17% or 40 million are very interested. While surveys of this nature have not been carried out in Ireland and Britain, the continued success of family history television programmes as well as the strong commercial success of Irish and British online publishers likefindmypast.ie, suggest that the underlying trend is the same.

I draw the committee's attention to the short roots tourism section of our submission. An estimated 90,000 people visit Ireland each year to engage in family history research. findmypast.ie now has more than 70,000 registered users from Ireland. This is the face of twenty first century genealogy. It is serviced almost entirely by online genealogy publishers, whether private or public. Genealogy is a business, a growing industry that offers employment prospects and tax revenues. The worldwide value of genealogy is approximately €4 billion and is consistently growing at rates of over 20% per annum. The scale of Irish emigration and the size of the Irish diaspora in general are important metrics in determining the potential value of Irish genealogy.

What can we learn from the last 15 years? Our submission identifies those things the State did that worked and those that did not. Let us look at the successes. First we have the publication of the 1901 - 1911 census records online. Even with budget cuts, the National Archives continues to release records online by working in partnership with the private sector, particularly findmypast.ie. The National Library, despite cuts of 40% has managed to maintain a free genealogy advisory service which is actually unsustainable with such cuts. In 2013 The Gathering was a great success but we need to develop roots tourism as a legacy project.

We can also learn from missed opportunities. We regret the continuing inertia of many State agencies vis-à-vis engaging with digitisation and releasing their records online, although sometimes they have no option. There is also a lack of understanding of the possibilities online publishers can bring to our heritage which is unfortunate. The development of the genealogy business offers great opportunities for tourism, access to archives and employment.

In light of these changes, what do we at Eneclann recommend should happen? In our submission we discuss many areas that should be addressed but in the time allowed, I will only bring some key points to the attention of the committee. Members will be glad to know that only one area involves spending. The Government must reverse the cuts to public archives and libraries. These provide an essential service that underpins all other development. There are hundreds of millions of genealogical records that must be made available and this will only happen with an adequately funded archival sector with the support of online publishers. The Government needs to familiarise itself with the genealogy business and what it means for the Irish economy, as it has already done with the technology industry. We have an excellent opportunity to turn this country into a European hub for genealogy but this requires the Government facilitating this development and enabling innovation. Our submission gives a step-by-step guide to some of the key issues to be addressed here, including freeing up access to historic records, changing data protection guidelines, empowering the cultural sector to partner with publishers and other innovators as well as connecting to the diaspora. We are incredibly lucky in Ireland, with tens of millions of people worldwide with an emotional connection to this island that other countries can only envy. To maintain these connections with successive generations and to strengthen these links, we need to connect these people to their personal heritage. Genealogy should be the key legacy from the year of The Gathering. We should have a genealogy centre in Dublin, which could be self-financing.

In conclusion, there are great opportunities to develop genealogy here and the Government can have a significant impact, for better or worse, depending on the decisions it makes or fails to make.

One thing is certain, we cannot do nothing.