Mr. Michael Merrigan:

With regard to the GRO, our society's view from 1997 was that there should be an amendment to the Act to allow for the concept of historical records, as Mr. Grenham said.

That was actually supported at the time by the then Minister, Síle de Valera, but, unfortunately, matters did not progress. The issue of security always seems to come up in regard to these particular records - the misuse of the GRO records. One of our members came up with an idea which could be looked at. Certificates obtained for research purposes would be stamped "Purely for research purposes," which would get over that particular problem.

My colleagues will speak about the pay-per-view sites, the free sites and how we deal with that on our own website, but I will come back to Deputy Murphy's point on the principle of public ownership and right of access. This is a cornerstone principle which we believe should be in legislation and in public policy. It is well understood that records have to be digitised and there is a cost there, and the recovery cost is fine. That is perfectly understandable, but we thought that a cornerstone of the State's policy in respect of genealogical records within the State, whether held in private or public hands, should be the principle of public ownership and right of access to the heritage. The register is owned by the church and various databases are owned by particular organisations, but access to that heritage should be based on the principle of public ownership and right of access. It does not preclude selling access to my colleagues' databases. We have a particular view, as I am sure my colleagues know, and would favour the relationship they have in Northern Ireland with heritage centres rather than the current one, because we look at it in three ways - from the point of view of the security of data, the security and viability of the centres themselves and the security of the employment they provide. Our proposals suggests they should be incorporated within the public library sector, on a par with what they have in Northern Ireland or very near to it. One of our issues is that the security of legal ownership of the database would be defined by that process. I will hand over to my colleague, Mr. Tom Conlon, on how we deal with access to the website, etc.