Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

I want to address a range of issues around the National Archives. In most countries the national archives are a major institution and are usually housed in an iconic building and looked on with pride by the citizenry. I do not say that is not the case here, but we tend to take a storage view of our archives rather than a view that we are proud of what we have managed to assemble. We saw it recently when we published the 1911 census on the Web. Already there have been 17 million hits. That shows the appetite that is there. Deputy Olivia Mitchell has been concerned for some time about the quality and availability of storage space and because of that urging I have asked my Department to consider the views I am putting forward and to come back to me as quickly as possible. I will take a look at the fee situation, but it is a bigger issue than that. I would like to take a broader national view of these archives to see how we can bring them centre stage in our artistic world.

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