Ms Máire Mac Conghail:

The Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland, the APGI, was founded in 1986. It acts as an accrediting and regulating body to maintain high standards among its members and to protect the interests of clients. Our members are drawn from every part of Ireland and represent a wide variety of interests and expertise. The ongoing involvement of individual members in lecturing, teaching and publishing maintains our position at the forefront of genealogical developments in Ireland. For more than two decades the field of ancestral research in Ireland has benefited greatly from the APGI's influence and lobbying. Beyond its functions as an accrediting and regulating body, it has made a very positive contribution to many areas of development, championing the cause of record users with State-run offices and the Irish Genealogical Project, subsequently Irish Genealogy Limited.

In respect of the Joint Committee on the Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht's request for submissions, we wish to raise the following three pivotal issues as examples of how finding workable solutions would greatly assist in developing such a plan as outlined by the Committee. The issues in question are: the website of the Department of Arts Heritage and the Gaeltacht, www.irishgenealogy.ie; the 1926 census; and the General Register Office of Ireland. To the fore in developing a plan to capture the full value of our genealogical heritage is for increased support to be given to the genealogy website – www.irishgenealogy.ie - of the Department of Arts Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The website, which is a work in progress, gives access, free of charge, to, for example, original images of parish church records – a primary source – and this, in turn, gives the website credence and authority. An annual dependable grant-in-aid would allow consistent forward planning with regard to content and facilitate the consistent monitoring of content and management of the website. The APGI - the only accrediting body for genealogists in Ireland – commends the Department in adopting the ethos and vision of the majority of our national cultural institutions by making accessible, free of charge, primary source material relating to our history and heritage. However, the Department needs financial and personnel investment to ensure the reliability and the ongoing development of the website and its content, CIGO

On the 1926 census, the APGI, particularly through its connection with the Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations, the CIGO, lobbied for many years to convince those in authority that census returns could be opened before the 100-year embargo first introduced in the Statistics Act 1993. Prior to the passing of the 1993 Act, the subsequently repealed Statistics Act 1926 provided no clear guidance regarding public access to census returns compiled post-Independence. The returns for 1901 and 1911 had been released by a warrant, signed under the Public Records (Ireland) Act 1867, in 1961. In the case of the 1911 census, this was only 50 years after the data was compiled. The sky did not subsequently fall in. When what became the Statistics Act 1993 was debated by the Houses in 1993, lobbying by the CIGO - spearheaded by its then general secretary, Mr. Michael Merrigan - succeeded in reducing the then proposed 100-year embargo to only 70 years. However, the Central Statistics Office did not support this measure and the 100-year bar was reinstated.

Numerous groups have continued to lobby since 1993 to allow early access to the 1926 census as a special case. In the months before the most recent general election, approaches were made to the current Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Deenihan, putting the case to him for inclusion of the proposal in the new programme for Government if, as seemed likely, Fine Gael and Labour were to form the next Administration.

The Minister agreed and saw the value of the arguments made. Since taking up the portfolio of Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht he has consistently promoted the statement in the programme for Government that the 1926 census returns should be released early. This was particularly the case when he was interviewed by The Irish Timesin April 2011 during a reception to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Irish Genealogical Research Society. Despite the commitment given in the programme for Government, the Central Statistics Office has consistently refused to engage and has advised the Department of the Taoiseach against amending the Statistics Act 1993. In the meantime, the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht has formed a working committee with the task of establishing what needs to be done to conserve, catalogue and prepare the physical records in advance of their release, which cannot be later than January 2027.

Representations were made to the Central Statistics Office in 2009 by Mr. Paul Gorry, a council member of the APGI, who requested data from the 1926 census about his deceased father under section 33 of the Statistics Act 1993. The CSO conceded in its reply that, “While the release of census information in respect of named individuals to their next-of-kin is allowable by law, the practical arrangements involved are significant and effectively preclude us from doing so". The APGI understands rudimentary finding aids have been compiled on the 1926 census returns held by the National Archives of Ireland. They would enable some searching to be undertaken in order to locate particular household returns.

One of the concerns raised by the Central Statistics Office was related to the privacy of data relating to persons born less than 100 years ago. We are aware that the Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations, CIGO, raised the issue with the Minister and made the helpful suggestion that if the privacy issue should become a sticking point with the CSO, a compromise might be to allow the temporary redaction of data for those born less than 100 years ago and who might be still living. The APGI supports the suggestion as a sensible compromise.

The third issue relates to the General Register Office. Its public search room holds all of Ireland’s civil records of births, deaths and marriages from 1845 to 1921 and for the Republic from 1922 onwards. Until recently the office was housed in premises well suited for public access and utility at the Irish Life Centre on Lower Abbey Street. The downturn in the economy necessitated a move to a State-owned building - the former labour exchange on Werburgh Street. However, publicity surrounding the move has not been favourable. The APGI concurs with our colleague, Mr. John Grenham, that among research facilities, the General Rgister Office should be a flagship facility, as is the case with the General Register Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast which last year received the CIGO’s prestigious award for excellence in genealogy. Unfortunately, that is not the case following the move of the General Register Office to Werburgh Street. It flies in the face of what the Minister is trying to achieve in the area of heritage. The Werburgh Street building, particularly the surrounds, urgently need a serious facelift.

By contrast, the APGI enthusiastically welcomed the recent announcement by the Minister that, through an amendment to the Civil Registration Act 2004, the Department’s website willshortly host the General Register Office’s generated computerised indexes to civil records. The departmental initiative should be extended to include the following sources on the Irish genealogy website: indices covering births, marriages and deaths of those born in Ireland who served abroad with the British army following the Act of 1879; indices for marine registers of births and deaths extant from 1864; indices covering people born in Ireland and who died abroad from 1864, generally known as the British Council of Births and Deaths; indices covering Irish people who died during the South African War from 1898 to 1902, otherwise knows as the Boer War; indices covering the deaths of those who served in the British army during the First World War from 1914 to 1918; the register and general index covering several thousand marriages and some baptisms performed in Dublin between 1806 and 1837 by the unlicensed clergymen Rev. Schulze. These indices currently held in Roscommon are not available for consultation at the General Register Office's research facility in Dublin which for the researcher makes for incomplete or inconclusive research. The APGI makes the case for all of the foregoing indices to be digitised and made available on the Department’s website.