Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I wish to endorse some of what was said regarding the Irish Land Commission records. Indeed, Deputy Ó Snodaigh also made that point. This is a treasure trove. Apart from them being working documents - I appreciate that is what they are - I would have thought they should be digitised because that would protect the original documents. These documents are often used or could be used as census substitutes. The loss of the 19th century census records has left gaps. Those of us who are interested in genealogy and so on seek out those census substitutes. There is a sizeable number of them in various places but this is one of the biggest archives and I completely endorse the calls for the records to be digitised and made available. I accept that they are working documents but access to them is important, even for historians.

It always struck me as strange that one can, as Deputy Ó Snodaigh pointed out, go up to the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and look at these records. The records held there come up as far as 1920. For some reason, there is secrecy here when it comes to these documents that are available for part of an island but were one collection of records before that. We have almost created a partition in respect of something that should be available.

It is important that cataloguing is done consistently. If it is not, things fall behind. I acknowledge the loss of the Public Record Office in a fire during the Civil War. I acknowledge the work that was done on the virtual archive. It is astonishing work. The fact that those physical documents were lost - and we have such poor respect for that part of our heritage - is all the more reason for doing this. It is striking that the loss of the records during the Civil War took place. We talk about that, yet it seems that kind of devaluation of things is being repeated through the failure to make the records as available as they ought to be. It may be down to cost or planning. These things take time, just like the next round of census records will take time to digitise, but even planning for it would be a real move forward. There was an announcement in that regard in the past year or two, but it was limited. I would like to hear what the Minister has to say on that.

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