Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

On the Deputy's second point, the National Archives Advisory Council was established to advise the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport on matters of archives under the 1986 Act. My information is that it is the Minister's intention to reappoint the council shortly to advise on draft legislation.

On the Deputy's first question, as I indicated in reply to an earlier question, whenever a system or database upgrade is performed checks are carried out to ensure existing electronic documents and records remain accessible from the upgraded system or database. It is also standard practice in the Department to convert data in older formats to more up-to-date formats on an ongoing basis to preserve accessibility in future. It is part of the upgrading process to ensure archives are transferred into the upgraded system.

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