Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

Broadly speaking, I accept the points being made by the Deputy, in particular, that the National Archives is under pressure, although it has had tremendous successes, for example, putting the 1901 and 1911 censuses online - the website has apparently had 125 million hits.

I wish I could give the Deputy a timeline for when the legislation will be ready but I cannot add to the information she already has from the legislative programme. My main concern is not just with what one might call institutional organisation questions, which consist at the top level of some kind of overarching co-ordination and management and, at the bottom level, shared back office services, which obviously make sense. The proper conservation of our archives and access to them is also important. Brilliant work is being done by historians on the basis of the archives, and new archives are becoming available all the time, such as the Bureau of Military History and the IRA military pension files, which will be available by 2016. For the sake of the economic, social and cultural history of the country, I would dearly like the Land Commission records to be made available to historians.

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