Dr. Maeve O'Rourke:

The question of whether the legislation, which still exists, that underpinned the Ryan commission and redress board mandated destruction is very important because the Bill is pictured or framed as the best we can do given that the records were supposed to be destroyed. It states that what we will do instead is preserve them but because we are doing something so different from what was always envisaged, we must seal them. It is important to ask whether the legislation actually mandated their destruction. Simply put, as far as I, my two co-contributors and Dr. James Callan in DCU can tell, neither of the Acts stated the records were to be destroyed. Section 7 of the Retention of Records Bill explicitly deletes the provision of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act 2000 that addresses the custody and disposal of its archive in accordance with the National Archives Act 1986.

As far as we understand, it was always envisaged that the Ryan commission's records were to fall within the National Archives Act 1986. The definition of departmental records in the National Archives Act includes commissions of inquiry. We did not see anything, including in the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act 2000, that undid this, until the Retention of Records Bill. We see in section 7 of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act 2000 that the commission's records are to be kept in custody or disposed of in accordance with the National Archives Act. There are also discussions in sections 33 and 34 of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act 2000 on transfer of the data provided to the confidential committee. Nowhere is there mention of destruction.

The Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002 does not bring the records within the National Archives, as was the case under the Ryan commission Act, but nor does it mention destruction. It talks about the redress board and the review committee determining for themselves the disposal of the records. It is our understanding that disposal could mean destruction but does not necessarily do so. We find, for example, a definition in the National Archives Act 1986 of disposal in section 9, which states the director of the National Archives may dispose of archives in his or her custody. According to the section, this means they should be either destroyed or transferred.