Mr. Brian Donovan:

A number of issues have been raised and I will answer them as best I can.

Senator Mac Conghail asked whether a case study was conducted anywhere in the world on the economic impact of genealogy related activity? I am not aware of one but I can refer members to the case study of the State of Utah in the USA. For its own reasons this has become a centre for genealogy. I am not going to discuss the good, bad or otherwise of those reasons but the point is that it has turned into a hub for north American genealogy. All the major companies are located there employing thousands in this industry. That happened for its own reasons. Something similar could happen in Dublin or an English speaking country, because this is what will bring in these companies. Ancestry.co.uk have already set up their international headquarters here and DC Thompson Family History has already set up an important office in Dublin, about which members will hear more on Thursday. We could be bringing in My Heritage.com and many other such groups to base themselves in Dublin. We have done really well in Ireland in reaching out to tech companies internationally to attract them to locate here. That is an added reason these companies want to be here because they are also deeply embedded within the tech industry.

Why should we not reach out? To do so would not require substantial expenditure. What we need is to have the vision to do this. It would create a tremendous spur for genealogy. It is not, however, the only thing we need to do. While there is no pot of gold at the end of the genealogical rainbow, for all the reasons we have discussed, we should be intelligent about using our economic prospects to further what we want to do with genealogy.

We were asked what we wanted in the area of data protection. Section 4 of our submission noted that we may only need to have a change in guidelines and regulations and the Data Protection Act may not require amendment. What we seek is a reduction in the basic exclusion from 100 years to 70 years, the norm in most countries in the European Union and the United States. Such a move would result in the release of records dating until 1943. The legal issues in respect of access to the 1926 census would also be removed and it would free up millions of other records that we not even begun discussing.

We were asked about the cultural sector making money. Section 4 specifically states that the cultural sector must be allowed to make money. It is not that we advocate turning cultural bodies into commercial bodies - on the contrary - but there is a disincentive to engage in activities which would raise finance to be spent on other things. These bodies are not encouraged to consider other options because there is no benefit for them in doing so. They do their best with what they have but that is not an option.

Senator van Turnhout raised a number of issues. I will be pleased to send her a copy of our submission. She raised an important point which has been raised previously and will be raised again, namely, the issue of free access to records versus paid access to records. This is a false dichotomy because one can have both. Private publishers are good at reaching out to people to build their family histories online. We offer added value in grouping and linking records, having family tree makers available and allowing people to do their research. We also offer a range of other services. We do not mind if records are free on another site, behind the pay wall of our site or even free on our site. It is not a case of having one thing or the other. We need to abandon the mindset that this can only be done in one way as it can be done in many different ways at the same time. The more freely available genealogical information is to more sites, the better it is at meeting the needs of our diaspora as well as our cultural and economic needs.