Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

This new provision will kick in when it is in electronic format, but to take Senator Mansergh's point, nothing would prevent an historian or indeed anyone else, from getting the original copy. The Minister is giving a commitment on that. On another point as regards genealogical searches, the capital city has huge numbers of people arriving from other parts of the world, North America in particular, who want to find out about their heritage. Given that Dublin is the capital city people will continue to use it above all other centres. However, in future there is nothing to prevent any of this information being made available on the Internet, no matter where people live.