Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Following Independence the commission's records were divided between the jurisdictions. In 1923, the Land Commission was reconstituted to recognise the Free State. The Land Commission archive has two main components, the records branch and the administration branch. The Deputy mentioned these records are publicly available in Northern Ireland. We do not hold the records in question in the same way as the corresponding records are held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. We cannot, therefore, make them available for public scrutiny.

As I said, these documents remain, in part, working records of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and any proposals for public access would, therefore, require careful consideration. The commission's work obliged it to establish who had legal title to the properties, which is a hugely complex task and so it began to collect wills, correspondence, State records, family tree records, lease books, tenants' lists, maps, deeds and more.

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