Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I recently read that the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Deputy Brennan, has 199 board positions within his gift. This is a serious responsibility and I do not need to lecture him on the importance of choosing the right people. I have no problem with the members of the former board. If he wants to reappoint all of them I will not complain. However, appointments should be made. This is a statutory body. By law we should have it, but we have had no body since last November. As the Minister said, part of its obligation is to advise him. If there had been such a body it might have advised the Minister not to put what little genealogy records we have left in the hands of groups of people charging for it. This is public information and it is the wrong choice. I am appalled that the few genealogy records we have, having burned nearly 1,000 years of records in 1922, which are parish records collated and gathered using public money, are not available to the public. On St. Patrick's Day we will spend hundreds of thousands of euro, millions of euro as Deputy Tom Kitt erroneously stated this morning, sending Ministers overseas to showcase Ireland to our diaspora. I think all the Cabinet members except Deputy Brennan are going away. In the same week we are telling them we will charge them for information on their forefathers. It was the wrong message to send and even at this stage we should examine this. It should be public information. We have a long tradition of making archival material freely available and facilitating access to it. Charging for it is the wrong choice.

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