Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

No, but my question is who will do this task? I suppose there is an easy answer and I presume the Department will agree with this, the Oireachtas does. The next question is who sponsors the Bill. If it is a Government Bill, it will be a Government decision to decide whether it will come under the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht or the Department for Rural and Community Development. If this had happened during the period when there was a single Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs or earlier, when arts and culture and dormant accounts were under a single remit, one would not have this problem. The Government has to decide which Department will sponsor the legislation and that it consults with the other Departments. That is a technical issue.

I think it would be much better if it were to come under the dormant accounts legislation but that is a personal view and if somebody decides otherwise, I am happy. Basically, one would be returning property to the people who owned it and it would only be when one could not find the heirs and the artefacts were of national interest that one would then decide, on a case-by-case basis, to put them on display rather than leave them to moulder.

Let us suppose that we added another 500 years, such that some of the items were 600 years or 700 years of age. Would anybody think it would be correct to leave interesting and valuable artefacts that long? No, of course not.

I think the issue of privacy is a total non-issue because we published the census. That was much more immediate. The 1911 census has been open for ten to 15 years. We did not go forward with opening up the next census, because of issues.

When we get to items dating from 1860 to 1880, if there were issues arising that had not been foreseen, one would deal with them then. Would Mr. Connolly agree that if one were to put the items on display, one would have to have a committee which would decide what was appropriate, along with criteria of sensitivity, national interest and so on, so that it would not be a case of throwing everything on the table but that a committee would oversee it? If we had such a procedure, would it ameliorate the concerns of the witnesses?