John O'Donoghue (Kerry South, Fianna Fail)

The Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands acquired responsibility for the Irish genealogical project from the Department of the Taoiseach in October 1997. The Irish genealogical project is building a very valuable genealogical resource which documents the key life events of all our ancestors. The Internet presents us with an opportunity to make an index of genealogical data available to all those who seek to trace their ancestry. I launched the Irish Genealogy Limited website in October 2002. A key feature of this website is the central signposting index, which is a database of 2.8 million records now available to search on the Internet.

Irish Genealogy Limited was incorporated in 1993 to function as the central co-ordinating and marketing agency for the Irish genealogical project. The project's primary aim is to include all church and civil records up to 1900. The number of records involved is in excess of 20 million. The updating of parish or church records is a central platform in the creation of a genealogical database because they predate civil registration. To date, more that three quarters of the target church records have been indexed by the 35 county based genealogy centres. The business plan for Irish Genealogy Limited for the years 2005-07 aims to have completed 90% of church records by the end of 2007. This year, I am allocating €395,000 to Irish Genealogy Limited, which is up 4% on spending last year, to enable the company press ahead with the delivery of its business plan.

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