Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I want to discuss the issue of the National Archives. I must declare a real interest in this area. I was a special rapporteur for a project undertaken by one of the committees some years ago about maximising our cultural and genealogical heritage. We published a report on that in 2015 and one of the things that stuck out for me was the affinity that was felt, particularly by the diaspora, for accessing records and seeing a physical connection. Records are a public good. The website the Department runs, www.geneaology.ie, is one that I use and it is very good. The more records that can be added to that, the better.

In terms of the building project, I recall visiting the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland when it was on the Lisburn Road to do some research. It comprised a few prefabs and was pretty awful. Before they moved to their fantastic new purpose-built offices in the Titanic Quarter, the staff did a huge amount of work digitising the records because there would not be access to the facility. Are we looking at the same kind of thing happening here? One of the things about the National Archives that is pretty unique is that it can be a remote offering. It is wonderful to go into the reading room of the National Library but the National Archives have a very broad reach, particularly with digitisation. Is there a scaled up programme of digitisation planned in the context of the rebuild?