Mr. Seán Ó Súilleabháin:

I was the county librarian in County Leitrim for 30 years, so my background is in libraries. In libraries generally, one is aiming for free access as far as possible. That has not really been possible in the case of genealogy services. There is a huge cost to getting the records digitised and computerised, but fortunately, through the good use of FÁS schemes, we have got to where are. Even at that, to continue to provide the service and to provide the centres will not be possible without some charge - a modest one, we hope. Many of the centres are supported by the local authorities. In Leitrim the county council gives us a substantial subvention every year, and it is the same in many other counties. It is an accumulation of the money one takes in from charges, a subsidy from the county council and a lot of voluntary effort. If it had to be paid for otherwise, it would cost a huge amount of money. I think most people are prepared to pay a modest charge for it.

The whole purpose of this is tourism. It could be Irish tourists as well as Americans and those of other nationalities. As Mr. Grenham said, the crucial thing for the tourist is to find the house and the place. Some of the sources talked about today, while they are useful in their own right, will not necessarily do that. We would all like to see the 1926 census, but it of marginal importance in terms of finding places. When one knows where one is from, then one looks at the census.

The birth, marriage and death records - civil and church records - are the critical ones. The whole thing will not be complete until all of the church and civil records are computerised and digitised for the whole country. As it is at the moment, the most important source is rootsireland.ie, the Irish Family History Foundation, because it has about 80% of the church records. A considerable number of civil records are already fully indexed in some counties. As of now, it is the only show in town.

If one is an American who wants to find the place of one's ancestors, rootsireland.ie is the primary site. The other things are useful and important but it is the crucial one. The most important thing is to get the rest of this done. A lot of our centres are doing that with the benefit of the bit of money they are getting from being online. When it is all done, we will need to have it all together. Somebody mentioned that although most of the 32 counties are on our site, County Kerry, Dublin city and part of Cork are not. There needs to be a means of getting that together. As I said, 75% or 80% of it is on the Irish Family History Foundation site already. There are the portions not done in those counties and then there are the counties not on it which are on the Department's site. I would like to see more co-operation with the Department to get that together as well as with the other stakeholders to decide how that will be done. We all want to get to a point at which all of those crucial church and State records - birth, marriage and death records principally - are all computerised and digitised and available in some fashion. I hope we will have more discussion with the Department. We have had some over the years but there needs to be intense negotiations as soon as possible to bring that to a conclusion. As of now, the Irish Family History Foundation is providing a tremendous resource at a very minimal cost and it is still totally reliant on the centres and voluntary effort.