Ms Catriona Crowe:

It was not an intelligent promise to make in the first place and it was done without consultation with the people whom it was going to most affect. However, that does not mean that it stands. Dr. O'Rourke's submission, which I commend to everyone to read in its entirety, is the best account we have of the legislation. She has painstakingly gone through how everything was constructed. Her submission seems to me to put that issue to rest in the sense that the word "destruction" is not mentioned anywhere while the word "disposal" is. "Disposal" has been taken to mean destruction in archival terms over the years but this is not the case in the context of the National Archives Act. It is a separate thing. That argument can easily be made. In any case, there is nothing to say that people cannot change their minds. Scaremongering about this is ridiculous. Again, we are back to this point - what we need to do is consult the survivors. Only 100 survivors have been consulted so far by the Department out of all the people who gave evidence. We have Revenue Commissioners and a Department of Social Protection that can contact any citizen at any time they like. It cannot be beyond the bounds of the Department of Education and Skills to get a proper consultation system into operation that finds out what the feelings of survivors are around destruction and preservation, whether we should open the records now or keep them for 75 years or whatever the case may be. We need to know what they actually think. So far we have heard today from four people who want the records to be open, certainly to themselves. When we go further and start to look and see what else happens, that is it. They have to be at the centre of it.

There has been scaremongering about destruction of the records. I had discussions with a number of officials in the Department of Health and Children as it was then known about the necessity to keep these records for posterity, not to speak of the pressing need for survivors to have access to them. The issue is a paper tiger really and it needs to be removed. The Department of Education and Skills, however, has a disgraceful record in terms of destroying its own records before the National Archives Act of 1986 came into being. I am not saying I would not put anything past it; that would be very wrong and I do not wish to attribute bad motives to anybody. If the Department were to attempt to go ahead and destroy these records, there would be a national outcry the like of which we have not seen. Everybody now knows how important this material is so I do not think that is going to happen.