Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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I welcome Mr. Shovlin and congratulate him on his appointment. I would be a bit like my colleague, Deputy Murphy. I am an enthusiast in terms of digital access to media and particularly the National Library. I congratulate the library on the 1916 papers it has produced online. I have used the 19th-century baptismal registers to trace a relation of mine who, as I discovered, fought in the American civil war. It is a wonderful facility.

In terms of joining up all the knowledge, for example Google books, the universities, and all the other institutions that are online right around the world - we have a lot of Irish records in America, in New York state, the Smithsonian or whatever - is there a vision of how to tie all that together? How can we leapfrog and have everybody working with everybody else to achieve a platform where Irish people in any part of the world can get a seamless link to the resources?