Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is where the records management project comes in. The guidelines will be done in conjunction with the National Archives. The Departments must find out how much is there and how much needs to be kept. They will have guidelines to work from. Then it will be referred to the National Archives, which can then decide what needs to be retained. They must get approval from the National Archives as to what goes into storage. I believe that about 80% of the documents can be disposed of. That is a real problem at the moment. Departments are storing mountains of documents and the chances are that they will not need to keep more than 20% of them.

However, we need to have the policy in place in order that the staff will be clear about what needs to be kept and what does not need to be kept. A smaller amount of material will then be presented to the National Archives, which will go through it as a final check.