Ms Karel Kiely:

The website rootsireland.ie has a large amount of data and the Department has a website with more data. We supplied a map in the submission to the committee. The majority of the 32 Irish counties are on rootsireland.ie. We will be adding a great deal more data in 2014. The Department's site covers part of Dublin and parts of Cork and Kerry. We would obviously welcome one website, but we have the majority of the records on our site. Some of what we do not have is due to churches not giving us access. In my case, in Celbridge, County Kildare, I was never allowed to take the parish registers. That was always a consideration for us. Unless the parishes were willing we could not take the registers from them. John Grenham said earlier that the Department and the Irish Family History Foundation were the main players. The churches, too, have ownership over their records and what happens to those records. They should be consulted and the records should be made available on their terms as well. That has been a problem in some counties, where things were done against the wishes of the churches, especially the Catholic Church. Parishes feel strong ownership of their records and what happens to those records. They are the records of local people in that county, and that is a very strong connection that should be maintained.

Of course we would welcome partnership. We have always engaged with the Department when we have been asked to make suggestions, and we have made suggestions about how things could move forward. We would love to have all the parish records on one website, certainly as a starting point.