Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute on this legislation. I wish to discuss the Irish Land Commission.

Mr. Pat Shine, a neighbour of mine, came to see me in Leinster House recently. In his retirement, he has, unfortunately, been involved in the registration of bogs in County Roscommon. In the case of his family, 280 pages of documentation, including 96 different documents that had to be signed in 98 different places, had to be submitted to register the bog. It took three years to process the application. The big difficulty for him was getting access to the Irish Land Commission records for his family. A query he got back from the Property Registration Authority ran to five pages of legal questions. That is what families across the country who are trying to register bogland are dealing with due to the lack of access to these data that are being stored in the Irish Land Commission records in Portlaoise.

Unfortunately, I have a lot of experience of dealing with the Irish Land Commission through the years, or the lands division in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. On numerous occasions I have dealt with Josephine, who manages the files from County Roscommon. No more than any of the other officials, she is pulling her hair out trying to manage these paper records that have not been digitised. There are between 7 million and 17 million uncategorised records in the warehouse in Portlaoise. Outside of the National Archives' collection, this is the single largest collection of records, dating back to the late 19th century and early 20th century, in Ireland. It was set up as a result of the Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881. The records are held in a warehouse in an industrial estate in Portlaoise. One has to get written permission from the descendants of the people who were involved in the original transactions in order to get access to that documentation. As far as the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is concerned, these are private and personal records. The records of my family are in there, as are those of many others, particularly those in the western half of the country. I am sure some of the records of the Minister's family are held there too. The records should be digitised and made available. They contain a substantial amount of historical facts. This is particularly important in light of the loss of so many records, including many that were held in the Four Courts and the Custom House, during the Civil War.

This resource is vital for people tracing their history and ancestry, but it is also vital for families that are trying to register their plots of land or bog. The difficulty is that it will be impossible to find a solicitor willing to go through the process that Pat Shine went through. It is okay for him; he has a love of this and is retired and can do that. There is no solicitor, however, who will be able to charge any type of reasonable fee to ensure the acre or half acre plot of bog a family was given by the Irish Land Commission is properly registered and recorded. The failure to provide access to these records means that people are being denied access to their land and property rights. The records should not just be accessible to the people and families whose names are contained within them.

This is a history of this State, probably one of the most comprehensive histories we have left, given what happened during the War of Independence and the Civil War. Each of the records needs to be digitised and made available online so that we can all access them and look at them. I hope the Minister in her response will give a positive indication that this will be a priority for the Government.

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