Ms Karel Kiely:

I thank the joint committee for giving me the opportunity to make a presentation. I am the secretary of the Irish Family History Foundation and the genealogist for County Kildare. I am joined by my colleagues, Ms Nora O’Meara, North Tipperary Genealogy Service; Mr. Fintan Mullen, Ulster Historical Foundation, and Seán Ó Súilleabháin, Leitrim Genealogy Service.

The Irish Family History Foundation has 33 county genealogy centres on the island of Ireland. We began computerising parish records in each county in the late 1980s and have provided research services for over 25 years or more in some cases. The majority of the county centres were formally set up circa 1991 under the direction of Mr. Paddy Teahon, Department of the Taoiseach, with the aim of computerising all of the genealogical records pertaining to each county, including church, civil, census, gravestone and land records, while providing local employment and training opportunities. We operate with paid staff and volunteers. Some 14 centres facilitate various training and employment schemes.

The foundation is a not-for-profit company and completely self-financing, paying VAT and corporation tax. The county centres provide local employment and financially support other local services such as heritage centres. They are a focal point for tourists in the respective counties and, in many cases, are the only contact point for visitors in the off-season. Local researchers can pinpoint the exact area from where someone’s ancestors came and help him or her to locate relatives still living in the area. The service is free of charge and only available in a county with a genealogy centre.

We have provided extensive background details on the foundation and its member centres in the written submission. I would like to address the main topic before the committee through the following questions: how can or should genealogical and related services be resourced and funded? The network of local centres and the highly successful website would not be available if we did not charge a fee. In turn, as a not-for-profit organisation, the vast majority of revenue goes straight back to the local centres. We use the balance to add further records to the site and develop and promote services and for the administration and management of the website. In over 25 years we have yet to encounter a credible suggestion for alternative funding. There seems no reasonable alternative to develop and manage the website. It is a statement of fact that charging for this information online is international best practice.

The provision of the 1901 and 1911 Irish census returns online has proved successful. That is not surprising, as the data are provided at no charge to the end user. What may not be appreciated is that a small charge could generate millions in income for the National Archives of Ireland and the State, as it has done for the national archives in the United Kingdom and the USA. Another State body, the General Register Office, has no plans to make the State’s computerised records of births, marriages and deaths available free of charge to the public. The argument in support of the free availability of records is that it will promote or encourage tourism. However, there is no necessary connection between providing a free service and tourism promotion. We request that further developments in this area be carefully examined. A common approach between local centres and national institutions would benefit a country that sells the personal experience to tourists as being paramount. The causal connection between free online access for family histories and tourism inflow has not been demonstrated.

Let me pose a second question which is an interesting one. Who derives value from our services? We have over 1.2 million visitors a year to our website and over 560,000 registered users, the majority of whom are from outside the State. The data are accessed by two groups: professional genealogists or researchers and amateur family historians. In the case of the former, it is reasonable to charge fees in order to provide them with structured access to what is a key input to their professional revenues.

The second group is more interesting. Our site provides them with access to one of the key sources for Irish family history research, parish records, on an all-Ireland database. This unique and invaluable resource was created in each county and it enables the user, with a few clicks of a mouse, to locate records even if they have limited information or no known county of origin. The fees charged are nominal and our customer surveys show that they are generally understanding of our need to be able to fund the provision of our services. Tracing family history is not easy or straightforward, and researchers expect assistance. Our online service is supported by an advisory service in each county and via a centralised customer service system where users can avail of free advice and help from locally based experts.

There is no evidence that our operating structure in any way, shape or form holds back the wider development of genealogy in Ireland and the derivation of value from it. With regard to maximising the value of our genealogical heritage, the IFHF hopes that a way forward can be found whereby the local county genealogy centres and national institutions can work together within the existing and self-funding common platform. This would offer overseas users and visitors to Ireland a unique blend of a local and national experience.

To finish, I will give the committee a more tangible example of the potential there is to leverage our existing structures and institutions in order to create value and benefits for the whole island of Ireland. We recently hosted two Facebook question-and-answer sessions in conjunction with Tourism Ireland which were highly successful. The success of this prompted us to co-sponsor a competition to win a trip to Ireland over the new year, and to offer credits to access our database to the runners-up. We emailed more than 250,000 of our subscribers overseas, and more than 20,000 globally entered the online competition. These activities have resulted in the growth of Tourism Ireland's Ireland Family History page from 53,000 likes to over 186,000. The co-operation between us achieved exactly the kind of result that could be replicated and leveraged across all of our county centres and national institutions, creating a vibrant, well-resourced community to ensure we capture the full value of our genealogical heritage both immediately and in the future.

My colleague Mr. Fintan Mullen from the Ulster Historical Foundation, which is one of the oldest and most successful genealogical organisations in Ireland, will add a few words.