Ms Catríona Crowe:

I thank the Chairperson for inviting the National Archives of Ireland, NAI, here today to make a presentation to the committee.

The National Archives of Ireland has custody of some of the most important genealogical records relating to Irish people, and we have always taken our responsibilities to them very seriously.

The National Archives and its predecessor body, the Public Record Office of Ireland, have a long tradition of assisting both professional and amateur genealogists in their searches for relevant records and providing outreach services to national and local organisations interested in genealogy.

We recognise that there is very great interest among Irish people, both at home and abroad, in tracing their ancestors and in finding out what conditions were like for them when they lived here. The Irish Diaspora is estimated to amount to 70 million people in all parts of the globe and many of these have an interest in their family and local history. Thus, we endeavour to create resources to help people to find individuals for whom they are searching and to help them to understand the society of the time. Thanks to the Internet, our main tool is the use of on-line facilities but our traditional interaction with readers who visit or write to the National Archives of Ireland, remains very important to us and our services reflect that commitment.

We began our development in the provision of on-line genealogical resources with one of the biggest cultural websites ever produced in Ireland, the 1901 and 1911 census website. The records of our only two complete surviving pre-Independence censuses went on-line between 2007 and 2010. The process was a partnership between ourselves, the Library and Archives of Canada, the National Library of Ireland, the Department of Finance and many small repositories who gave us copies of relevant material free of charge. The census website has been a great success since its launch, with 850 million hits and 15 million visitors. The records have been digitised to preservation standards and transcribed into a searchable database which contains all of the data contained in the household forms, including name, occupation, age, religion, gender, Irish language proficiency, child mortality, and so on. The website contains these databases as well as the digitised images of the original forms. This is the gold standard for genealogical provision so that one can link to an image of the original document in order to verify the index information. These forms are surrounded by contextual and illustrative material relating to life in Ireland at that time. The site can also be browsed by location. This is another important facility for genealogy websites because people want to know about the neighbours of their ancestors; they want to be able to learn about life in the townland or the street at that time. The census website is now the most comprehensive free census website in the world.

The financial climate has changed substantially since the census went on-line, and the National Archives has had to adapt accordingly to manage on-line provision at minimum expense. Our route to this objective is through partnership. The National Archives has a memorandum of understanding with the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, LDS, to allow LDS to digitise from microfilm made by the church some years previously and to index a number of record series which we consider to be our most important genealogical records. There is a separate tripartite agreement between the national archives, LDS and Eneclann, a private service-provider, to digitise and index other record series not in the first rank of priority as genealogical resources but very important, none the less. I have provided a list of these records in my written submission to the committee. These will be available on a subscription basis for five years onfindmypast.ie, Eneclann’s website, after which they will become available free on all three websites. In the intervening period, the records are available free on-line to visitors to the national archives reading room. This practice is now common in many archival institutions such as the UK national archives and the US National Archives and Records Administration. My written submission gives details of the record series which have already gone on-line, and those which will shortly go on-line. Quite an amount of information will be on-line in 2014 and will be free to access.

It is the policy of the National Archives that our genealogical and other records should be placed on-line free to access. We believe that our citizens and our considerable diaspora deserve unfettered access to their genealogical cultural heritage, especially since so many significant genealogical records were lost in the destruction of 1922. Genealogists and scholars can all be kept happy by free access to digitised archives which have meanings and uses well beyond one’s ancestors' names. My written submission elaborates on some of the scholarly uses made of our on-line records.

The National Archives provides a contracted professional genealogical advice service free to our readers every morning in the national archives from 10.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. The service has been in existence since 2003, and has proved very popular, particularly with first-time visitors who need help with researching their family history. Between 2,000 and 4,000 people avail of the service each year.

The creation of Irishgenealogy.ieby the Department. of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, is a big step forward in consolidating genealogical resources in one place, with a well-written text to advise and support researchers. All of the National Archive's genealogical content is available on this portal site, along with other sources such as Griffith's Valuation and we will add to it as time goes by. We regard it as an important assistance to anyone researching family history to have as much information as possible in one location. That is where the future lies.

The main record series which are still difficult to access are the records of the General Register Office, for births, deaths and marriages, Catholic parish records, and the three big series of land records, the Registry of Deeds, the Irish Land Commission and the Land Registry. My written submission elaborates on the problems affecting access to these extremely important genealogical records.

The National Archives provides an excellent service to those interested in their family history, both in our reading room and through our on-line resources. Over the coming years, particularly next year, a large number of record series will be added to our genealogy website pages, thus enhancing our offering to the public. We will continue to engage in the broader world of Irish genealogy, in an effort to ensure that the maximum number of records are available, free to access where possible, to our citizens and our diaspora.