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

I will come in very briefly. I envisage that we will take on board these useful submissions. There will be other submissions, particularly from the banking institutions. We will sit down with the drafters and look at what the Department said. We will take on board as far as is possible the very valid issues raised. We will see what changes can be made without moving away from the central part of the Bill. As I said, the central part of this Bill is so simple. It is just a matter of putting a legal structure on it. Maybe in some of the issues where we thought we had been safeguarding, we were really just creating complexities. I accept that. We will then come back with proposals for a remodelled Bill, which will leave out things that the Department indicated would be better left out and so on, and, as far as is possible, keeping the essence of the Bill, while taking on board what has been suggested here and by the banking institutions, that is, the people who hold them and have more information than any of us. Yet, I am not sure how much information they really have, because record-keeping was not exactly the same in times gone by.

We will do that and then come back for a much shorter debate with the Department. If we take on board things that have been highlighted here, then fewer debates will have to take place. That will minimise the unnecessary over-and-back. On the hoof, because I read these just last night, we must try to see a way forward that minimises this and gives us the biggest output for the smallest amount of input from the Department. We will first take on board very seriously every point debated and then we will come back. If there is to be a counter-argument to be made, we will explain it at that stage, rather than trying to do it here. I think it is a bit too complex for here, because the Bill itself is quite complex. That is what I see as a way forward.

On the other hand, there is an idea here that is worth pursuing. I do not see any big resistance from the Department in having a peep at this in order to see if other things are there. It would not take an awful lot of artefacts of value to turn up in order to make it a worthwhile exercise. We might find something really interesting. There may be something with a social history.

We became conscious of one issue when we opened up the monument in Moore Street. There were little bits of artefacts and there was one very simple thing. There was a picture of Robert Emmet which was dated pre-Rising and pre-national revival. It therefore showed that history had lived. It was not the case that it in itself was of hugely significant importance. Yet, it gave the context of what the people who were in those houses believed in. They were found under floorboards or something. We had an exhibition in this House of what was found under the floorboards when we did the renovation. There were things that were not hugely monumental, but that are interesting in a historic context. We would not know that until we opened them up.

I have one final point, which has become very obvious the more you talk to people. I accept that things are not actually in boxes. I understand that, in one case, there is a trunk with ropes and everything around it. I will not say how it was sealed. It was probably sealed on the outside with padlocks and so on. God knows what is inside. Maybe there is nothing inside. I accept that things were given in various shapes and forms. They could be in envelopes, or in any form. For safekeeping, they are in boxes. Maybe we have to change the name of the Bill from the safe deposit boxes and related deposits Bill. I am very flexible about that, because I think those terms may give the wrong idea. It is not about that. We are looking for stuff that was put into banks for safekeeping. That is what we want to look at.