Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The website of the General Register Office of Northern Ireland, GRONI, provides indexes which lead the user to the actual records. The records that were made available on the website to which the Minister referred had to be taken down because the Data Protection Commissioner had a difficulty with the information that was thereby made available. Now, it seems, there is no such problem. However, we will park that issue for now. Will the Minister indicate when the information will be available online?

The GRONI website allows users, for a fee, not only to search the index entries but to see the records themselves. We should not be out of line with Northern Ireland in this regard. There was a major project done in Roscommon, at a cost of more than €10 million, where the records were digitised. Will those records, in addition to the indexes, be made available to the Department under the legislation to which the Minister referred and, if so, when is it likely to happen?

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